HENRY    CARROLL 

From  an  original  in  the  possession  of  Mrs.  Edwin  F.  Sweet, 
of  Grand  Rapids 


*LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE 
HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 


BY 

GAILLARD  HUNT,  Lrrr.D.,LL.D. 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW   YORK    AND     LONDON 

MCMXIV 


ERICA 


PUBLISHED    OCTOBER. 

K-O 


TO 
RIDGELY    HUNT 

MY    ELDEST   BROTHER  AND   KINDEST   FRIEND 
I    DEDICATE  THIS    BOOK  AS  A  TOKEN 
OF   MY   AFFECTION    AND    GRATITUDE 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

PREFACE ix 

I.  PEACE       i 

II.  A  NEW  ORDER 8 

III.  THE  LAND 15 

IV.  THE  PEOPLE 19 

V.  OURSELVES  AS  OTHERS  SAW  Us 27 

VI.  As  WE  SAW  OURSELVES 34 

VII.  A  MAN'S  BODY  AT  AUCTION 39 

VIII.  COACH  AND  SLOOP 48 

IX.  TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 58 

X.  WOMEN 73 

XL         PLAYS  AND  SONGS 85 

XII.  COMMON  PEOPLE 98 

XIII.  THE  SUNSHINE  OF  HUMOR 107 

XIV.  "RELIGION,  OR  THE  DUTY  WE  OWE  TO  OUR  CREATOR"  114 

XV.  WEBSTER'S  SPELLER       124 

XVI.  READING  AND  WRITING 139 

XVII.  PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 153 

XVIII.  VICE 171 

XIX.  THE  WICKED 188 

XX.  THE  POOR  AND  SICK 194 

XXL       DOCTORS 201 

XXII.  COOKS 215 

XXIII.  DISCONTENT 228 

XXIV.  EXCRESCENCES 239 

XXV.  THE  GOVERNMENT 248 

XXVI.  THE  PRESIDENT 259 

XXVII.  PATRIOTISM 273 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 280 

INDEX 289 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

HENRY  CARROLL Frontispiece 

THE  OCTAGON  HOUSE Facing  p.  4 

VIEW  OF  NEW  YORK  BAY  FROM  THE  BATTERY,  1822  "  30 

FROM  A  BOOKING-LIST "  48 

BOSTON  EXCHANGE  COFFEE-HOUSE "  50 

WATERLOO  INN.  THE  FIRST  STAGE  FROM  BALTIMORE 

TO  WASHINGTON "  54 

THE  CAPITOL  IN  1814 "  60 

THE  WHITE  HOUSE  IN  1814.  SOUTH  FRONT  ...  "  60 

AFTERNOON  DRESS 64 

WALKING-DRESS "  64 

PROMENADE  DRESS 64 

EVENING  DRESS 64 

WALL  STREET,  CORNER  OF  BROAD  STREET,  SHOWING 

CUSTOM-HOUSE,  FIRST  PRESBYTERIAN  AND  TRINITY 

CHURCHES 68 

CITY  HOTEL,  BROADWAY,  NEW  YORK,  1812  ....  "  70 

A  VIEW  OF  CHARLESTON 72 

VIEW  OF  CITY  HALL,  PARK  THEATER,  AND  CHATHAM 

STREET,  1822 9° 

JOEL  BARLOW 142 

NOAH  WEBSTER 142 

THE  CITY  PRISON,  OR  BRIDEWELL,  WEST  SIDE  CITY  HALL  "  168 
THE  DEBTORS'  PRISON,  SUBSEQUENTLY  THE  HALL  OF 

RECORDS 168 

EDWARD  LIVINGSTON,  AUTHOR  OF  THE  CRIMINAL  CODE 

FOR  LOUISIANA 190 

MRS.  JAMES  MADISON 268 

JAMES  MADISON 268 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  was  written  at  the  request  of  the 
Committee  of  One  Hundred  to  celebrate  one 
hundred  years  of  peace  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  at  the  city  of  Washington,  and  is 
a  contribution  to  that  celebration.  It  is  a  sketch, 
drawn  in  outline,  of  life  and  manners  in  the  United 
States  in  the  year  when  peace  was  made  with  Great 
Britain,  and  this  nation  started  upon  a  career  of 
separate,  independent  national  development.  I  have 
suggested  some  of  the  causes  of  the  development,  and 
have  portrayed  the  character  of  the  people  in  a  gen 
eral  way.  I  hope  I  have  been  able  to  communicate 
some  of  the  atmosphere  of  the  time  to  my  narrative. 
It  was  an  invigorating  atmosphere,  full  of  life  and  in 
spiration  to  those  who  breathed  it.  We  must  believe 
that  it  was,  for  if  it  had  not  been  we  should  not 
now  rank  among  the  great  nations. 

While  I  write  these  lines  the  minds  of  all  Americans 
are  occupied  with  fearful  thoughts  of  the  war  in 
Europe.  The  ebb  and  flow  of  the  tide  of  battle  are 
watched  anxiously  from  day  to  day,  and  we  are  won 
dering  helplessly  what  will  be  the  eventual  outcome. 
We  are  conscious  that  changes  in  civilization,  the 
nature  of  which  human  knowledge  and  human  expe 
rience  cannot  foretell,  are  now  preparing.  At  this 

ix 


PREFACE 

period  of  dreadful  uncertainty  in  the  European  out 
look  our  minds  may  turn  with  satisfaction  to  the  con 
templation  of  that  time,  one  hundred  years  ago, 
when  England  and  the  United  States  made  a  treaty 
which  recited  that  they  wished  to  be  at  peace  with 
one  another.  The  progress  of  the  spirit  of  peace  be 
tween  the  two  nations  during  the  century  which  has 
ensued  is  a  fact  which  we  can  accept  with  full  knowl 
edge  that  it  has  been  of  benefit  to  mankind.  Yet  it 
has  grown  with  the  strength  of  the  nations.  They  are 
of  more  equal  strength  now  than  they  were  when  the 
peace  was  first  made.  Nor  has  the  friendship  been 
due  to  absence  of  rivalry  and  to  separation  from  each 
other.  On  the  contrary,  we  are  rivals  in  every  branch 
of  human  effort,  and  the  whole  length  of  a  boundary 
of  each  touches  a  boundary  of  the  other.  Yet  so 
amicable  have  the  relations  between  Canada  and  the 
United  States  been  for  the  past  century  that  it  re 
quires  an  effort  of  memory  to  recall  any  differences 
that  have  arisen.  One  can  walk  across  the  boundary 
line  without  realizing  that  he  has  passed  from  domes 
tic  to  foreign  territory,  except  as  he  is  reminded  of  it 
by  the  existence  of  a  custom-house.  The  most  popu 
lous  portions  of  the  United  States  and  Canada  are 
separated  by  the  Great  Lakes,  and  the  traveler  may 
sail  them  from  end  to  end  and  see  no  sign  to  suggest 
that  they  are  not  a  highway  reserved  exclusively  for 
peaceful  voyaging.  Unfriendly  feelings  must  have  a 
starved  existence  when  all  the  outward  signs  are  of 
amity  and  good-will.  The  treaty  of  peace  of  1815 
had  a  far-reaching  consequence  in  that  simple  agree 
ment  made  on  April  28,  1817,  by  Richard  Rush,  act- 


PREFACE 

ing  for  the  American  government,  and  Charles  Bagot, 
acting  for  Great  Britain,  which  recites  that  each  gov 
ernment  may  have  only  one  small  vessel,  with  one 
small  cannon  upon  it,  on  each  lake,  and  that  "All 
other  armed  vessels  on  these  lakes  shall  be  forth 
with  dismantled,  and  no  other  vessels  of  war  shall  be 
there  built  or  armed." 

GAILLARD  HUNT. 

WASHINGTON,  D.  C.,  October  9, 1914. 


LIFE   IN   AMERICA 
ONE    HUNDRED   YEARS    AGO 


LIFE    IN   AMERICA    ONE 
HUNDRED    YEARS    AGO 


i 

PEACE 

r  I  ^HE  treaty  of  peace  which  terminated  the  second 
1  war  between  the  United  States  and  Great 
Britain  was  signed  at  Ghent  by  the  American  and 
British  envoys  on  December  24,  1814;  and  on  the  26th 
Henry  Carroll,  one  of  the  secretaries  to  the  American 
envoys,  started  for  Washington  with  a  copy  of  the 
treaty,  going  by  way  of  England,  where  he  met  the 
British  sloop  of  war  Favorite,  on  which  he  sailed  from 
Plymouth  for  New  York,  January  2,1815.  On  the  same 
ship  with  him  was  Anthony  St.  Jno.  Baker,  secretary 
to  the  British  negotiators,  also  carrying  a  copy  of  the 
treaty  and  clothed  with  authority  to  ratify  it  with  the 
American  government.  To  insure  safe  delivery  of  the 
precious  document  a  second  messenger  had  been  sent 
by  the  American  envoys  on  a  ship  bound  for  Chesa 
peake  Bay,  but  he  arrived  two  days  after  Mr.  Carroll, 
and  consequently  brought  no  news.  The  Favorite 
was  spoken  off  Sandy  Hook  on  Friday  evening, 


IN  AMERICA  :ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

February  loth,  by  the  British  ship  Tenedos,  having 
been  thirty-eight  days  in  crossing.  She  came  up  the 
Bay  the  following  day,  and  Carroll  landed  at  the 
Battery  at  eight  o'clock  on  Saturday  evening  and 
went  directly  to  the  City  Hotel  on  Broadway  near 
Cedar  Street.  The  news  which  he  carried  swept 
before  him,  and  within  twenty  minutes  after  he  had 
landed  lower  Broadway  was  illuminated,  and  men 
paraded  up  and  down  the  street  with  lighted  candles 
in  their  hands,  shouting  that  peace  had  come.  At 
noon  of  Sunday  Carroll  left  New  York  by  post-chaise 
for  Washington.  He  passed  through  Philadelphia 
just  twelve  hours  later  and  reached  Washington 
shortly  after  dark  on  Tuesday.  This  was  fast  travel 
ing,  for  the  distance  was  two  hundred  and  ten  miles 
by  the  road  he  took.  When  the  treaty  was  ratified 
a  few  days  later  a  copy  was  sent  to  New  York  by 
express,  going  from  Washington  to  Philadelphia  in 
fourteen  hours  and  from  Philadelphia  to  New  York  in 
nine  hours,  making  twenty-three  hours  for  the  whole 
distance ;  but  this  was  by  relays,  and  was  considered  a 
notable  feat. 

As  late  as  Sunday,  February  i2th,  there  was  no 
inkling  in  Washington  that  Carroll  had  reached 
American  shores,  nor  of  the  news  he  bore;  but  on 
Monday  evening  a  rumor  of  the  facts  was  abroad  and 
threw  the  city  into  a  tremor  of  excitement.  It  had 
come  by  express  from  Baltimore,  and  there  was  doubt 
of  its  truth,  for  people  feared  lest  it  might  be  a  report 
started  by  speculators  in  stocks.  Early  the  following 
evening,  however,  Mr.  Carroll's  post-chaise,  drawn  by 
four  horses,  came  lumbering  through  Bladensburg, 


PEACE 

on  past  the.  ruined  Capitol  and  down  Pennsylvania 
Avenue,  following  for  this  part  of  the  journey  the 
same  road  that  Ross  and  Cockburn's  men  had  traveled 
when  they  had  entered  and  sacked  the  city  the  summer 
before.  It  was  a  clear,  cold  night,  but  Pennsylvania 
Avenue  was  deep  with  mud,  for  it  had  been  raining 
all  the  previous  week.  So  the  chaise  plunged  and 
splashed  on  in  the  darkness,  until  it  came  to  the 
house  where  Carroll's  chief,  James  Monroe,  the 
Secretary  of  State,  lived.  As  soon  as  Carroll's 
coach  had  been  recognized  it  was  known  that  the 
rumor  of  the  previous  day  was  true,  and  a  crowd  of 
cheering  men  and  boys  followed  him  as  he  drove 
through  the  city.  Their  enthusiasm  was  partly  due 
to  an  error  on  their  part,  for  they  thought  the  peace 
had  been  brought  about  in  consequence  of  the  battle 
of  New  Orleans.  On  February  4th  the  city  had  been 
illuminated  in  honor  of  that  victory,  and  on  February 
nth  rockets  had  been  set  off  to  celebrate  the  evacua 
tion  of  Louisiana  by  the  British  army.  The  treaty  of 
peace  had  been  signed  before  these  things  occurred, 
but  the  news  coming  soon  afterward  was  inextrica 
bly  interwoven  in  the  popular  mind  with  this  final 
triumph  of  American  arms. 

As  soon  as  Secretary  Monroe  had  received  the 
treaty  from  Carroll  they  went  down  the  street  to 
gether  to  show  it  to  President  Madison. 

The  President  was  not  occupying  the  White  House 
at  the  time.  The  walls  of  that  structure  were  stand 
ing  in  unimpaired  strength,  but  they  were  defaced  and 
blackened  by  the  fire  with  which  the  enemy  had 
sought  to  destroy  it  four  months  before.  While  the 

3 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

work  of  rebuilding  was  in  progress  he  was  living  in  the 
private  residence  which  Col.  John  Tayloe  had  gener 
ously  placed  at  his  disposal.  It  stood,  and  still  stands, 
at  the  corner  of  New  York  Avenue  and  Eighteenth 
Street,  and  is  a  unique  example  of  the  genius  as  an 
architect  of  Dr.  William  Thornton.  There  is  a  large 
circular  hall  on  the  first  floor  from  which  a  broad 
staircase  winds  upward  for  three  flights.  The  rooms 
are  large  and  cheerful,  with  bay-windows  and  curved 
walls;  and  to  obtain  these  lines  of  beauty  in  the  in 
terior  the  outer  walls  are  several-sided,  and  the  house 
has  always  been  known  as  the  "Octagon  House." 
The  dining-room  is  on  the  right  of  the  front  door  as 
you  enter,  and  the  large  drawing-room  is  on  the  oppo 
site  side;  and  here,  if  he  followed  his  custom,  the 
President  was  sitting,  conversing  with  his  wife  and 
members  of  his  household,  when  Secretary  Monroe  and 
Mr.  Carroll  were  announced.  Of  course,  they  were 
talking  of  peace,  and  they  made  no  secret  of  their 
hope  that  it  would  come  soon. 

In  truth,  everybody  was  tired  of  the  war.  It  had 
worn  itself  out  without  either  side  conquering.  The 
American  navy  had  won  glorious  victories.  General 
Jackson  had  annihilated  the  British  army  at  New 
Orleans.  The  disgrace  of  Detroit  and  Bladensburg 
had  in  a  measure  been  wiped  out.  The  contest 
could  now  be  closed  with  honor,  and  it  was  ex 
pedient  to  close  it.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  none  of 
the  concrete  causes  which  had  brought  it  on  now 
existed.  They  had  arisen  in  consequence  of  the 
war  between  France  and  England  and  our  neutral 
position.  But  France  and  England  were  now  at 

4 


\\ 

I! 

5.  o 


'  / 


PEACE 

peace,  we  were  not  neutral  any  longer,  and  there  were 
no  neutral  rights  to  infringe  upon.  There  were  no 
war  orders,  no  decrees  against  our  vessels,  no  seizures, 
no  searches  for  contraband,  no  paper  blockades,  no 
impressments  of  American  seamen.  We  could  keep  on 
fighting,  if  we  chose  to  do  so,  over  the  abstract  ques 
tion  of  whether  England  had  had  a  right  to  do  these 
things  and  would  have  a  right  to  do  them  again.  For 
the  present  they  were  not  being  done,  and  we  had 
fought  because  they  had  been  done,  and  not  because 
England  had  asserted  a  right  to  do  them.  As  for  the 
question  of  expediency,  the  American  government  had 
no  desire  to  stand  against  the  undivided  land  and 
naval  forces  of  England,  fresh  from  their  victories  over 
France. 

The  greatest  disappointment  of  the  war  had  been 
the  attitude  of  many  of  the  people  at  home.  Speaking 
broadly,  the  South  had  supported  the  war;  the  new 
West  had  supported  it  better  than  the  South;  in  the 
Middle  States  there  was  much  opposition  to  it,  and  the 
East  had  opposed  it  bitterly.  At  this  very  moment 
five  leading  citizens  of  New  England,  sent  as  dele 
gates  from  the  convention  which  had  met  at  Hartford 
early  in  January  to  formulate  measures  against  the 
war  policy  of  the  administration,  were  on  their  way  to 
Washington,  bearing  grievances  and  threats  against 
the  federal  government. 

Although  the  President  earnestly  desired  peace,  the 
last '  advices  from  the  commissioners  at  Ghent  had 
discouraged  his  hopes  of  obtaining  it  until  there  had 
been  more  fighting.  He  and  his  envoys  thought  the 
British  envoys  were  purposely  delaying  the  negotia- 

5 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

tions,  believing  that  New  Orleans  and  the  mouth  of 
the  Mississippi  would  soon  fall  into  their  hands. 
They  demanded  as  a  basis  of  peace  that  each  country 
should  retain  in  its  possession  such  territory  as  it 
might  hold  when  the  war  should  close.  As  late  as 
October  ipth  the  American  commissioners  had  been 
instructed  not  to  yield  to  the  British  demands. 
After  further  discussion  they  had  been  dropped,  and 
at  the  same  time  the  American  commissioners  with 
drew  their  insistence  that  the  treaty  contain  a  clause 
in  which  Great  Britain  should  expressly  abandon  the 
right  of  impressing  into  her  service  American  seamen 
of  British  origin.  So  both  commissioners  having  with 
drawn  the  demands  which  caused  contention,  there 
was  nothing  to  do  but  to  write  a  treaty  which  declared 
that  the  two  countries,  having  been  at  war,  now  de 
sired  to  be  at  peace.  The  rest  of  the  document  was 
detail  and  a  postponement  of  minor  questions  in  dis 
pute.  The  Federalists  ridiculed  the  treaty  as  soon  as 
they  saw  it,  and  most  historians  have  dealt  with  it  in 
the  same  spirit;  but  time  has  justified  it,  for  the 
points  of  difference  between  the  two  countries  on 
which  it  was  silent  have  since  been  settled  peacefully. 
The  President  did  not  hesitate  to  accept  the  treaty, 
and  it  was  no  sooner  in  his  hands  than  he  announced 
his  satisfaction  with  it.  He  was  not  a  demonstrative 
man,  and  it  is  not  recorded  that  he  uttered  any  unusual 
expressions  of  pleasure  when  he  knew  that  the  war 
was  over;  but  it  was  different  with  his  wife.  Dolly 
Madison  radiated  good  nature,  and  her  happiness  was 
irrepressible.  There  are  several  accounts  of  what 
took  place  at  the  Octagon  House  that  night,  when  the 

6 


PEACE 

President  told  his  wife  that  peace  had  come,  which 
may  be  incorrect  in  the  fact  but  are  undoubtedly  true 
in  the  impression  they  convey.  It  is  said  that  she 
announced  the  fact  to  all  the  house  by  shouting, 
"Peace!"  that  some  one  rang  the  dinner-bell  and 
shouted,  "Peace!"  that  Miss  Sally  Coles,  a  cousin  of 
Mrs.  Madison's,  who  was  living  with  them,  went  to 
the  head  of  the  basement  stairs,  where  the  negro 
servants  were  crowded,  and  shouted,  "Peace!"  that 
they  took  up  the  cry.  Presently  guests  began  to 
arrive,  and  the  house  was  thronged  with  people  who 
had  one  word  upon  their  tongues — "Peace." 


II 

A   NEW   ORDER 

WHEN  Mrs.  Madison's  dinner-bell  rang  in  honor 
of  peace  it  was  not  known  that  it  was  ringing 
out  an  old  order  and  ringing  in  a  new;  that  a  turning- 
point  in  the  destiny  of  the  country  had  been  reached ; 
and  that  it  was  now  for  the  first  time  fairly  starting 
on  a  career,  separate,  -independent,  and  its  own.  The 
days  of  ascendancy  and  control  of  its  fathers  were 
over.  They  had  passed  off  the  stage  or  were  limping 
useless  upon  it.  The  Declaration  of  Independence 
had  been  signed  thirty-eight  years  before,  and  only 
six  of  the  signers  survived — Jefferson,  John  Adams, 
Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton,  William  Floyd,  and 
William  Ellery.  All  were  permanently  retired  from 
participation  in  public  affairs  except  Ellery,  who  held 
the  inconspicuous  office  of  Collector  of  Customs  at 
Newport.  Elbridge  Gerry,  who  died  November  14, 
1814,  being  at  the  time  the  Vice-President,  was  the 
last  signer  to  hold  an  important  office.  None  of  the 
leading  military  characters  of  the  Revolution  was  in 
the  public  eye  except  Timothy  Pickering,  who  was 
playing  an  unpatriotic  part.  Nicholas  Gilman,  of 
New  Hampshire,  who  died  May  2d,  1815,  and  Rufus 
King,  of  New  York,  were  the  only  members  of  the 

8 


A  NEW  ORDER 

Congress  then  sitting  who  had  served  in  the  Conti 
nental  Congress. 

It  was  twenty-seven  years  since  the  Constitution  had 
been  framed,  and  eleven  of  the  forty-one  members 
who  attended  the  last  sitting  of  the  convention  were 
alive.  Except  the  President,  only  two  of  them  were 
now  men  of  influence — Charles  Pinckney,  who  was 
powerful  with  the  Republicans  of  South  Carolina,  and 
Rufus  King,  who  had  a  following  among  the  moderate 
Federalists  of  the  East.  Jared  Ingersoll,  of  Phila 
delphia,  had  recently  been  defeated  for  the  vice- 
presidency,  but  his  influence  hardly  extended  beyond 
the  circle  of  lawyers  and  aristocrats  among  whom  he 
moved.  Gouverneur  Morris,  old  and  ill-tempered,  was 
cursing  the  administration's  policy,  but  he  had  no 
audience.  As  the  membership  of  the  Cabinet  had 
changed  it  had  shifted  steadily  away  from  the  old 
order.  Albert  Gallatin,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
who  had  participated  in  the  Revolution  and  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution,  was  succeeded  by  George 
W.  Campbell,  who  gave  way  to  Alexander  H.  Dallas, 
and  he  to  William  H.  Crawford,  and  none  of  these  had 
been  in  public  service  until  after  the  Constitution  was 
adopted.  Dallas  and  then  Crawford  had  taken  over 
the  War  Department,  after  William  H.  Eustis  and 
John  Armstrong,  both  officers  in  the  Army  of  the 
Revolution,  had  successively  retired.  William  Pink- 
ney  and  Richard  Rush,  the  Attorneys-General,  were 
too  young  to  have  seen  Revolutionary  service;  so  was 
Benjamin  W.  Crowninshield,  who  succeeded  William 
Jones,  a  Revolutionary  soldier,  at  the  head  of  the 
Navy  Department.  When  Madison  left  the  Presi- 

9 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

dency  in  1817  he  and  James  Monroe,  his  Secretary  of 
State,  were  the  only  members  of  the  administration 
who  had  been  in  public  life  when  the  new  government 
was  started. 

In  Congress  there  had  been  a  revolution,  and  the 
power  had  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  young  men, 
who  controlled  the  House  of  Representatives — Henry 
Clay,  the  Speaker  from  1811  up  to  1814,  aged  in  the 
latter  year  only  thirty-seven;  Langdon  Cheves,  his 
successor,  of  the  same  age;  John  C.  Calhoun,  the 
Chairman  of  the  Committee  of  Foreign  Affairs,  and 
William  Lowndes,  the  Chairman  of  the  Committee  of 
Ways  and  Means,  both  aged  thirty-two;  Felix 
Grundy,  aged  thirty-seven,  and  a  few  others  who  ac 
cepted  their  leadership. 

The  people  had  been  slow  to  break  away  from  old 
conditions,  for  habits  of  thought  are  not  easily  nor 
quickly  changed.  One  hundred  years  ago  there  was 
not  a  man  in  America  over  thirty-eight  years  of  age, 
of  American  birth,  who  had  not  been  born  a  colo 
nial  Englishman.  There  was  not  a  grown-up  man  of 
American  parentage  whose  parents  had  not  been  born 
the  subjects  of  a  king,  and  nearly  all  had  been  born 
the  subjects  of  the  British  king.  The  people  had 
been  brought  up  as  colonists  and  had  been  stamped 
with  the  characteristics  of  colonists  when  their  minds 
were  in  the  plastic  state.  The  Revolution  had  oblit 
erated  the  stamp  for  a  time,  but  in  the  quiet  of  peace 
it  had  begun  to  reappear,  and  many  Americans  began 
to  look  at  things  as  they  had  been  accustomed  to 
look  at  them  in  earlier  days.  Each  man  concerned 
himself  with  his  immediate  surroundings  and  the 

10 


A  NEW  ORDER 

political  entity  of  which  he  and  his  forefathers  had 
been  a  part.  This  had  been  the  colony  and  was  now 
the  state.  He  took  an  interest,  too,  in  the  affairs  of 
Europe.  For  a  century  and  a  half  he  and  his  ancestors 
had  resided  in  a  European  dependency,  and  during 
all  of  that  time  European  politics  had  been  of  direct 
concern  to  him.  He  was  not  yet  used  to  his  own 
national  government,  which  had  taken  the  place  of 
the  European  government.  It  was  an  experiment 
which  he  regarded  critically,  with  a  feeling  of  aloof 
ness  and  without  affection.  France  and  England 
then  monopolized  the  European  stage,  and  it  is  not 
strange  that  they  should  have  taken  up  a  great  deal 
of  the  attention  of  Americans.  One  country  they  had 
been  accustomed  to  think  of  as  the  mother  country, 
and  until  recently  they  had  called  it  "home."  The 
other  had  been  their  traditional  enemy,  against  whom 
their  forefathers  had  waged  war  almost  continuously. 
Recently  she  had  fought  with  them  when  they  had 
rebelled  against  the  mother  country.  The  usual  line 
of  cleavage  between  those  whose  minds  cling  to  the 
past  and  who  take  their  lessons  from  its  experience 
and  those  who  put  the  past  behind  them  and  build 
upon  the  present  and  the  hopes  of  the  future  was  ap 
parent.  Macaulay's  description  is  as  applicable  to 
parties  in  America  as  it  is  to  parties  in  England: 

In  one  sense,  indeed,  the  distinction  which  then  became  ob 
vious  [in  1641  in  England]  had  always  existed,  and  always  must 
exist.  For  it  has  its  origin  in  diversities  of  temper,  of  under 
standing,  and  of  interest,  which  are  found  in  all  societies,  and 
which  will  be  found  till  the  human  mind  ceases  to  be  drawn  in 
opposite  directions  by  the  charm  of  habit  and  by  the  charm  of 
novelty.  Not  only  in  politics,  but  in  literature,  in  art,  in  science, 

ii 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

in  surgery  and  mechanics,  in  navigation  and  agriculture,  nay, 
even  in  mathematics,  we  find  this  distinction.  Everywhere  there 
is  a  class  of  men  who  cling  with  fondness  to  whatever  is  ancient, 
and  who,  even  when  convinced  by  overpowering  reasons  that 
innovation  would  be  beneficial,  consent  to  it  with  many  mis 
givings  and  forebodings.  We  find  also  everywhere  another  class 
of  men,  sanguine  in  hope,  bold  in  speculation,  always  pressing 
forward,  quick  to  discern  the  imperfections  of  whatever  exists, 
disposed  to  think  lightly  of  the  risks  and  inconveniences  which 
attend  improvements  and  disposed  to  give  every  change  credit 
for  being  an  improvement. 


Thus  it  was  that  while  the  country  was  yet  strug 
gling  in  the  meshes  of  its  old  customs  there  had  arisen 
naturally  a  political  party  composed  of  men  who  re 
membered  their  origin  and  the  origin  of  their  insti 
tutions,  who  sympathized  with  England  and  who 
hated  France.  They  wished  to  cultivate  England's 
good  will,  and  only  stopped  short  of  a  desire  to  be 
in  political  subjection  to  her  again,  but  in  reality  they 
were  still  in  mental  subjection  to  her.  A  French  party 
was  formed  also,  composed  of  radicals  who  looked 
with  intense  interest  and  sympathy  upon  her  revo 
lution  as  fully  in  line  with  our  own,  who  remembered 
the  alliance  with  sentimental  feelings,  who  hated 
England  because  of  the  cruel  incidents  of  the  war. 
As  the  death-struggle  of  England  and  Napoleon  grew 
fiercer  the  enthusiasm  of  the  English  and  French 
parties  in  this  country  cooled,  for  both  combatants 
treated  American  rights  with  that  indifference  which 
the  rights  of  the  feeble  commonly  receive.  More 
over,  few  Americans  went  so  far  as  to  sympathize 
with  a  foreign  nation  against  their  own.  The  con 
temptuous  treatment  we  received  revealed  our  feeble- 

12 


A  NEW  ORDER 

ness  as  it  had  not  been  revealed  before.  It  appeared 
that  we  had  grown  in  size,  but  not  in  strength. 

Two  serving-men  in  Shakespeare's  '  *  Coriolanus " 
are  arguing  against  peace: 

"Ay,"  says  one,  "and  it  makes  men  hate  one  an 
other." 

"Reason,"  says  the  other:  "because  they  then 
less  need  one  another." 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  in  the  long  interval  of 
peace  after  the  revolution  the  different  sections,  states, 
and  parties  of  the  country,  not  having  the  need  of  one 
another  plainly  before  their  eyes,  drifted  into  a  selfish 
rivalry  and  opposition  to  one  another  which  engen 
dered  bad  feeling  and  closely  bordered  upon  the  land 
of  hate. 

A  new  generation  of  men  who  had  never  themselves 
known  colonial  dependence  came  to  the  rescue.  They 
pushed  the  old  leaders  aside  and  led  the  country,  all 
unprepared  and  disunited  as  it  was,  into  the  war,  and 
there  it  was  more  united  than  it  had  been  in  peace,  and 
soon  the  English  and  the  French  parties  disappeared. 
Factional  opposition  to  the  war  itself,  however,  be 
came  more  dangerous;  and,  of  course,  the  personal 
jealousies  and  antagonisms  which  arose  among  the 
military  rivals  were  communicated  to  their  followers 
and  created  bad  feeling.  The  passions  of  the  factions 
had  reached  the  critical  stage  when  the  peace  came. 
The  people  were  united  in  approving  that,  at  any  rate. 
They  were  worn  out  with  domestic  quarrels  and  glad 
to  readjust  themselves  to  new  conditions.  The  foreign 
parties  were  dead;  the  conduct  of  France  and  Eng 
land  had  killed  them.  So  was  the  issue  upon  which 

13 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

the  people  had  split  so  bitterly — of  whether  the  war 
should  be  waged.  There  was  no  European  aggres 
sion  to  fear ;  the  European  peace  had  settled  that.  Old 
points  of  difference  being  dead,  there  .was  a  season 
when  the  new  points  were  developing,  but  were  not 
yet  plainly  obvious — a  season  of  calm  between  storms 
and  of  uninterrupted  development  of  material  strength. 
The  signing  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  had 
marked  the  beginning  of  the  nation;  the  signing  of 
the  Treaty  of  Ghent  marked  the  beginning  of  its 
vigorous  young  manhood. 


Ill 

THE    LAND 

WHEN  an  American  spoke  of  his  country  a  hun 
dred  years  ago  he  always  spoke  of  it  in  the 
plural  number,  having  it  in  his  mind  as  a  union  of 
separate  sovereign  states.  He  had  not  yet  grasped 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  citizen  of  a  continental  nation. 
When  he  bounded  the  United  States  he  bounded  the 
territory  of  1783  and  nearly  always  left  out  Louisi 
ana,  although  that  enormous  domain  had  been  added 
to  the  United  States  thirteen  years  before.  When 
the  question  of  buying  it  was  under  discussion  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  in  1802  one  of  the 
members,  Roger  Griswold,  of  Connecticut,  truly  said 
that  the  framers  of  the  Constitution  had  never  looked 
forward  to  an  addition  to  the  Union  of  new  territory 
so  large  that  it  would  overbalance  the  old  territory. 
Nor  had  the  citizens  of  the  old  states  looked  forward 
to  it,  and  they  did  not  understand  it.  That  they 
were  beginning  to  do  so  was  an  important  circum 
stance  in  showing  that  the  consciousness  of  the  na 
tional  destiny  had  awakened.  Already  the  more  ad 
vanced  teachers  were  telling  their  scholars  that  all 
the  territory  under  the  federal  government  might  be 
properly  included  in  the  term  the  United  States. 
The  boundaries  of  the  territory  of  1783  were  com- 

15 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

monly  understood  to  be  New  Brunswick  on  the  north 
east,  Canada  on  the  north,  the  Atlantic  Ocean  on  the 
southeast,  the  Spanish  possessions  of  East  and  West 
Florida  on  the  south,  the  Mississippi  River  on  the 
west ;  but  the  northeastern  boundary  line  was  not  yet 
drawn,  and  there  was  dispute  with  Spain  over  the  ex 
tent  of  the  Floridas.  The  area  was  ordinarily  com 
puted  as  being  1,000,000  square  miles,  about  1,400 
miles  from  the  northern  to  the  southern  boundary, 
about  1,400  miles  across  in  the  northern  and  about 
700  miles  in  the  southern  part.  Of  the  boundaries 
of  Louisiana  all  was  uncertainty.  The  eastern  limit 
was  put  down  as  the  Mississippi  River,  "which," 
said  the  geographers,  "  separates  it  from  the  United 
States  and  West  Florida,"  but  they  did  not  agree 
about  the  other  boundaries.  One  said  it  was  bounded 
on  the  south  by  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  on  the  west 
by  New  Mexico  and  unknown  lands,  on  the  north 
by  lands  still  possessed  by  the  Indians.  Another  gave 
the  southern  boundary  as  New  Orleans,  the  western 
as  New  Mexico,  the  northern  as  "the  unknown  re 
gions."  A  more  detailed  description  of  the  western 
boundary  was  New  Mexico  and  a  "ridge  of  moun 
tains  generally  denominated  the  Shining  Mountains, 
which  divide  the  western  waters  of  the  Mississippi 
from  those  that  flow  into  the  Pacific  Ocean."  It 
was  generally  believed  that  some  part  of  it  extended 
to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  The  area  was  computed  as 
being  more  than  a  million  square  miles,  but  how  much 
more  no  one  cared  to  guess.  The  real  area  of  the 
original  territory  was  only  827,844  square  miles,  and 
of  Louisiana  1,171,931,  but  our  concern  is  to  know 

16 


THE  LAND 

what  the  people  thought  it  was  rather  than  what  it 
was. 

In  1815  there  was  no  land-hunger  in  America.  If 
there  had  been  any  before  the  purchase  of  Louisiana 
the  unexpected  acquisition  of  that  vast  expanse  had 
more  than  satisfied  it.  It  was  not  until  a  generation 
later,  when  a  Southern  party  which  desired  to  in 
crease  its  political  power  by  increasing  the  territory 
which  it  could  control  arose,  that  the  appetite  for 
more  land  became  a  craving  with  a  part  of  the  people. 
It  is  true  that  the  Floridas  were  desired;  not,  however, 
for  their  terrritory  so  much  as  because  they  were  in 
the  way  of  the  orderly  progress  of  the  commerce  and 
population  of  the  United  States  and  were  a  menace 
to  our  peace.  The  symmetry  of  the  sea-coast  was 
destroyed  by  this  foreign  peninsula  between  the  ocean 
and  the  Gulf.  As  soon  as  Louisiana  was  acquired 
the  fate  of  the  Floridas  was  sealed.  Already  the 
government  had  taken  steps  to  buy  them  from  Spain, 
and  five  years  later  the  sale  was  consummated. 

The  United  States  was  divided  territorially  into 
eighteen  states  and  four  territories.  Vermont  had 
been  admitted  in  1791,  Kentucky  in  1792,  Tennes 
see  in  1796,  Ohio  in  1802,  Louisiana  in  1812.  The 
organized  territories  were  Indiana,  Illinois,  Michi 
gan,  Missouri,  and  Mississippi.  Maine  was  a  dis 
trict  of  Massachusetts  till  1820.  Wisconsin  was  in 
cluded  in  Illinois  until  1818,  when  Illinois  became  a 
state,  and  Wisconsin  was  attached  to  Michigan. 
Missouri  took  in  everything  north  and  west  of  the 
state  of  Louisiana.  The  area  of  the  whole  country 
was  understood  to  be  about  2,000,000  square  miles, 

2  17 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

the  extreme  length  from  north  to  south  1,500  miles, 
the  extreme  breadth  from  east  to  west  2,000  miles. 
The  inhabitants  proudly  said  that  it  was  the  largest 
country  in  the  civilized  world  except  Russia.  The 
great  size  and  unknown  extent  furnished  food  for 
their  imagination;  and  now  that  their  attention  was 
concentrated  on  their  own  affairs  they  began  to  see 
the  vision  of  the  future  and  to  indulge  in  bold  and 
expansive  hopes.  That  they  were  well  governed  was 
recognized  by  foreigners.  "Humanly  speaking,"  said 
one  of  them,  "no  circumstance  can  prevent  these 
United  States  from  becoming  eventually,  and  at  no 
distant  period,  a  great  and  powerful  nation,  influ 
encing  and  controlling  the  other  sovereignties  of  the 
world." 

From  every  old  community  in  the  East  adventurous 
young  men  went  forth  to  explore  and  conquer  the 
unknown  country  stretching  toward  the  "Shining 
Mountains,"  and  to  every  old  community  came  back 
the  stories  of  its  wonders.  The  people  fed  upon 
wonders,  and,  not  unnaturally,  came  to  believe  that 
their  own  wisdom  and  energy  had  accomplished  things 
which  the  favors  of  nature  alone  had  produced. 

"The  United  States,"  says  the  Easy  Grammar  of 
Geography,  published  in  1818,  compressing  all  the 
virtues  of  the  nation  into  two  sentences,  "are  cele 
brated  for  the  excellence  of  their  Constitution,  which 
provides  for  political  liberty  and  individual  security. 
The  inhabitants  are  justly  famed  for  their  ardent 
love  of  freedom,  for  their  hospitality  and  industry, 
and  for  the  great  attention  they  pay  to  agriculture 
and  commerce." 


IV 

THE    PEOPLE 

THE  census  of  1810  showed 'that  there  were  then 
7,239,903  inhabitants  in  the  United  States,  in 
cluding  Louisiana,  of  whom  1,191,364  were  negro 
slaves.  By  1815  the  whole  population  was  more  than 
8,000,000.  For  the  first  ten  years  of  national  exist 
ence  (from  1790  to  1800)  it  had  increased  by  2,000,000; 
for  the  second  (1800  to  1810)  by  3,500,000;  that  is 
to  say,  by  34>2  per  cent,  for  the  first  ten  years  and 
36^  Per  cent,  for  the  second  decade.  By  1830  it 
was  12,866,020;  by  1860,  31,443,321,  and  it  is  now 
about  94,000,000.  The  most  sanguine  prophets  did 
not  prognosticate  so  rapid  an  increase. 

It  was  customary  to  divide  the  population  ethno- 
logically  into  three  great  classes:  Europeans  and 
their  descendants,  Africans  and  their  descendants, 
and  Indians.  The  Europeans  were  of  English,  Dutch, 
German,  French,  Irish,  Scotch,  Swedish,  Swiss,  and 
Welsh  stock.  New  England  and  the  South,  so  far 
as  its  white  population  was  concerned,  were  inhabited 
almost  exclusively  by  English  descendants.  One- 
fourth  of  the  population  of  Pennsylvania  were  Ger 
mans,  of  whom  there  were  many  also  in  New  Jersey 
and  New  York.  There  were  descendants  of  French 
Protestants  in  New  York  and.  South  Carolina  and 

19 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

French  Catholics  in  the  new  state  of  Louisiana.  There 
were  Dutch  in  New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  Pennsyl 
vania;  Irish  in  New  York,  Pennsylvania,  New  Jersey, 
and  Kentucky;  a  few  Scotch  in  New  Hampshire, 
New  York,  New  Jersey,  and  North  Carolina;  Swedes 
in  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  and  Maryland;  Swiss 
in  Indiana  Territory;  and  Welsh  in  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania.  The  Germans  in  Pennsylvania  spoke 
their  own  language  among  themselves,  but  most  of 
them  knew  English.  Many  of  the  French  in  Louisi 
ana  spoke  only  French.  Speaking  generally,  how 
ever,  the  universal  language  was  English,  the  pre 
dominant  ancestry  was  English,  the  predominant 
customs  and  habits  were  English,  modified  by  en 
vironment.  The  most  populous  state  in  the  Union 
was  still  Virginia,  with  974,622  people;  but  New  York 
had  moved  up  from  the  third  place,  which  it  had  oc 
cupied  in  1790,  and  was  now  close  to  Virginia,  having 
a  population  of  959,949.  Pennsylvania  was  third, 
with  810,091.  The  population  of  Virginia  had  grown 
in  ten  years  by  more  than  200,000  people,  but  it  had 
only  gained  31,860  whites,  and  in  the  same  period 
New  York  had  gained  372,999  whites,  and  was  now 
the  most  populous  state  in  the  number  of  white  in 
habitants.  Massachusetts  was  the  fourth  state,  with 
472,040  people.  It  had  gained  50,000  people  in  ten 
years.  Kentucky  had  jumped  from  73,677  to  406,511, 
and  Ohio  from  42,156  to  230,760.  South  Carolina 
had  415,110,  having  gained  nearly  70,000  in  ten  years, 
but  of  these  only  17,946  were  white;  and  in  the  same 
time  New  Jersey,  with  245,562  in  1800,  had  gained 
34,000,  nearly  all  of  whom  were  white.  It  was  plain 

20 


THE   PEOPLE 

that  the  old  Southern  states  were  losing  their  su 
premacy,  the  movement  of  population  being  to  the 
North  and  the  West. 

Of  the  1,200,000  slaves  in  the  country  only  418  were 
in  New  England.  The  so-called  Middle  States  had 
147,737,  Dut  this  included  11,502  in  Maryland,  where 
slavery  was  still  lawful.  There  were  15,017  in  New 
York,  10,851  in  New  Jersey,  795  in  Pennsylvania, 
4,177  in  Delaware,  and  5,393  in  the  District  of  Col 
umbia.  All  the  rest  of  the  slaves  were  in  the  South, 
including  Kentucky  and  Tennessee.  They  were  dying 
out  in  the  North,  where  slavery  was  no  longer  lawful. 

The  Indian  population  had  become  unimportant 
in  the  East.  A  number  of  the  Iroquois,  or  Six  Na 
tions,  remained  on  their  lands  in  the  western  part  of 
New  York.  Wyandots,  Delawares,  and  Shawanese 
had  small  areas  of  land  in  Indiana  and  Illinois.  In 
Michigan  and  the  Northwest  territories  there  were 
many  Indians,  chiefly  Chippewas.  The  Creeks,  Chero- 
kees,  Choctaws,  and  Chickasaws  occupied  some  of 
the  most  fertile  portions  of  Georgia,  Alabama,  Missis 
sippi,  and  Tennessee;  but  their  power  had  been  broken 
in  the  recent  war,  and  already  it  was  decreed  that  they 
must  emigrate  to  the  wilderness  west  of  the  Missis 
sippi.  It  was  estimated  that  there  were  still  between 
70,000  and  80,000  Indians  east  of  the  Mississippi.  In 
the  Western  territory  there  were  supposed  to  be 
80,000  more. 

The  densest  population  was  in  Massachusetts, 
where  the  average  was  65  people  to  the  square  mile; 
in  New  York  State  were  20,  and  only  14  in  Virginia. 
In  Illinois,  Indiana,  Michigan,  Missouri,  and  the  far 

21 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Western  territory  there  were  more  square  miles  than 
there  were  people. 

There  were  few  large  cities.  New  York  was  the 
largest,  with  96,373  inhabitants,  having  passed  Phila 
delphia,  which  had  been  the  largest  until  recently 
and  now  had  92,247.  The  third  city  was  Baltimore, 
with  46,555;  Boston  came  next,  with  33,250;  then 
Charleston,  with  27,711.  New  Orleans  (17,242),  Salem 
(12,615),  and  Providence  (10,071)  were  the  only  other 
cities  having  more  than  10,000  inhabitants.  There 
were  ten  other  cities  which  had  more  than  5,000.  The 
whole  population  in  cities  of  over  5,000  inhabitants 
was  406,731,  only  6  per  cent,  of  the  whole.  The  pro 
portion  of  city  population  increased  steadily  there 
after,  and  is  now  more  than  40  per  cent,  of  the 
whole.  The  figures  are  enough  by  themselves  to 
show  that  the  people  were  nearly  all  farmers.  Many 
of  them  had  a  fear  of  the  cities,  born  of  ignorance  and 
the  free  play  of  their  imagination,  and  thought  them 
to  be  centers  of  luxury  and  sin,  places  of  gaiety  and 
pleasures  which  turned  the  heads  of  girls,  made  them 
worldly,  and  tempted  them  to  their  fall,  and  where 
young  men  were  led  into  dissipation,  vice,  and  crime. 
The  influence  of  the  cities  was  not  extensive.  People 
traveled  little,  and  comparatively  few  of  them  re 
sorted  to  the  cities  often.  The  dependence  upon  them 
did  not  spread  far,  and  their  population  subsisted 
upon  the  country  immediately  around  them.  The 
newspapers  were  published  in  the  cities  and  were 
generally  read,  but  they  did  not  contain  reports  of 
those  phases  of  life  which  lure  the  light-minded  and 
viciously  inclined. 

22 


THE  PEOPLE 

In  the  country  each  family  was  an  independency. 
It  provided  nearly  all  the  food  it  consumed,  spun  its 
own  thread,  and  made  much  of  its  own  cloth.  There 
was  exchange  at  the  mill,  and  sales  were  made  to 
obtain  money  for  hats,  shoes,  metal  ware,  agricul 
tural  tools,  and  a  few  luxuries,  but  in  the  main  the 
household  stood  alone,  and  might  be  cut  off  from  com 
munication  with  the  rest  of  the  world  for  months  at 
a  time  without  inconvenience. 

The  average  value  of  the  land  for  the  whole  country 
was  $10  an  acre.  The  highest  valuation  was  in  Rhode 
Island,  where  it  was  $39  for  the  whole  state.  In  the 
South,  where  there  was  extensive  planting,  it  was 
$4  in  Virginia,  $2.50  in  North  Carolina,  $8.00  in  South 
Carolina,  $2.50  in  Georgia.  In  New  York  large  tracts 
were  held  by  individuals  under  ancient  charters  or 
by  purchase  at  state  sales,  and  they  were  rented 
out  to  farmers  for  payments  partly  in  produce  and 
partly  in  money,  but  the  rents  were  low.  These  were 
the  only  tenant  farmers,  all  the  rest  of  the  land  being 
tilled  by  those  who  owned  it.  There  were  no  vassals, 
except  as  the  slaves  of  the  South  were  vassals.  Leav 
ing  them  out,  there  were  no  large  bodies  of  men  de 
pendent  for  their  sustenance  and  welfare  upon  a  few 
men  and  subject  to  be  used  by  them  to  further  their 
designs,  and  consequently  there  were  no  large  bodies 
of  men  who  felt  the  animosity  which  dependents  feel 
toward  those  who  have  power  over  them.  Here  was 
a  land  where  men  were  free  politically  and  indus 
trially.  Diversification  of  industries  and  consequent 
complications  in  the  national  life  were  beginning  to 
appear,  but  had  not  yet  come. 

23 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

There  had  always  been  some  manufacturing  in  the 
country,  and  after  independence  it  had  been  encour 
aged  by  protective  laws.  The  second  war  with  Great 
Britain  gave  it  a  sudden  and  irresistible  impulse  by 
the  high  prices  which  manufactured  articles  com 
manded  and  the  suspension  of  the  foreign  trade,  which 
eliminated  competition.  Manufacturing  sprang  up 
quickly,  especially  in  New  England  and  the  Middle 
States,  and  in  the  aggregate  employed  many  persons. 
It  was  estimated  in  1815  that  the  cotton  and  woolen 
manufactures,  which  were  by  far  the  largest  and  most 
important,  employed  in  all  about  200,000  persons, 
about  20,000  of  whom  were  men,  the  rest  being  women 
and  children  and  boys  under  seventeen  years  of  age. 
Much  of  the  manufacturing  was  carried  on  in  families, 
however,  the  machinery  used  being  simple  and  in 
expensive.  This  was  the  case  especially  with  cotton, 
wool,  and  flax.  Two-thirds  of  the  clothing  and  house 
linen  of  the  inhabitants  who  did  not  live  in  cities  was 
of  family  manufacture.  In  1820,  after  the  impulse 
to  manufacturing  had  become  settled,  the  largest 
number  of  persons  employed  in  one  district  in  manu 
facturing  was  in  Huntingdon  District,  Pennsylvania, 
where  390,  distributed  through  nine  establishments, 
were  engaged  in  making  bar  iron.  The  largest  num 
ber  in  one  locality  in  New  England  was  150  to  250  per 
sons  employed  in  making  window-glass  in  three  glass 
works — two  in  Boston  and  one  in  Chelmsford.  The 
country  was  far  behind  England  in  the  use  of  ma 
chinery  in  manufactures.  Steam  iron-works  were 
erected  in  Baltimore  in  1814;  but  the  motive  power 
for  all  other  manufactures  was  water  or  hand,  whereas 

24 


THE   PEOPLE 

steam  was  already  extensively  in  use  in  English  facto 
ries.  Great  aggregations  of  capital,  large  establish 
ments  operated  by  expensive  machinery,  populous 
communities  composed  almost  exclusively  of  factory 
workers,  were  unknown.  So  insignificant  was  the  fac 
tory  population  when  considered  with  reference  to 
the  whole  that  it  need  not  be  taken  into  account  in 
forming  a  conception  of  the  national  life. 

The  school-book  from  which  I  quoted  in  the  last 
chapter  spoke  of  the  devotion  of  the  people  to  com 
merce  as  well  as  agriculture.  Such  was  the  case  on 
the  seaboard,  especially  in  New  England,  and  the 
shippers  and  seafaring  men  were  an  important  al 
though  not  a  numerous  part  of  the  population.  Dur 
ing  the  war  some  of  the  sailors  had  found  employment 
in  the  navy,  and  many  on  privateers,  and  after  the 
peace  they  went  back  to  the  merchantmen;  but  some 
of  the  capital  which  had  been  in  the  shipping  had 
shifted  permanently  to  manufactures.  The  commerce, 
except  when  it  was  interrupted  by  the  war,  was  greater 
with  Great  Britain  than  it  was  with  all  other  countries 
combined;  but  when  the  Spanish  colonies  in  South 
America  revolted  it  was  believed  that  commerce  with 
them  would  soon  become  the  most  important  of  all. 
An  American  authority  (John  Bristed),  writing  in 
1818  on  "The  Resources  of  the  United  States,"  said 
"the  greatest  commercial  benefit  resulting  from  the 
emancipation  of  Spanish  America  would  be  the  for 
mation  of  a  navigable  passage  across  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama,  the  junction  of  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific 
oceans.  The  expense  of  such  an  undertaking  would 
not  exceed  three  or  four  millions,  sterling,  and  Great 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Britain  could  not  more  profitably  employ  twenty  or 
thirty  thousand  of  her  distressed  laborers  than  in 
executing  such  a  task,  under  the  superintendence  of 
competent  engineers." 

The  idea  was  not  new,  but  no  one  seriously  advanced 
the  proposition  that  the  United  States  should  build 
the  canal. 


OURSELVES   AS   OTHERS    SAW  US 

THERE  was  little  knowledge  of  the  United  States 
in  foreign  countries  in  1815,  and  not  much  in 
terest.  The  American  Revolution  had  come  when 
liberty  was  the  fashion  in  Europe,  when  it  was  dis 
cussed  by  popular  writers  and  talked  of  in  drawing- 
rooms;  and,  with  France  as  our  ally,  our  struggle 
had  arrested  the  attention  of  the  civilized  world; 
but  the  painful  struggle  of  the  new  nation  to  stand 
alone  afterward  was  not  an  inspiring  spectacle,  and 
received  little  notice.  It  was  not  generally  believed 
that  we  would  stand  alone  long.  The  cause  of  popular 
liberty  had  suffered  serious  discredit  because  it  had 
assumed  a  hideous  form  in  the  French  Revolution, 
and  the  pendulum  had  swung  back  to  orthodox  mon 
archical  ideas  of  government.  Moreover,  the  affairs 
of  Europeans  were  in  a  crisis  and  engrossed  their 
minds.  Our  second  war  with  England  received  meager 
attention  even  in  England  itself,  and  still  less  on  the 
Continent.  Contemporaneous  historians  barely  gave 
it  a  paragraph,  and  there  were  many  intelligent  Eng 
lishmen  who  had  never  heard  of  Andrew  Jackson 
even  after  the  battle  of  New  Orleans.  Such  demand 
for  information  about  the  country  and  its  people  as 
existed  was  supplied  by  a  few  publications  of  travel- 

27 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

ers  who  told  their  experiences  and  impressions.  Nat 
urally,  the  narratives  were  disparaging,  for  the  rough 
ness  of  life  and  the  hardships  of  travel  put  the  tourists 
in  bad  humor.  It  is  to  be  remarked,  also,  that  the 
people  of  one  nation  are  commonly  prejudiced  against 
other  nations  and  that  travelers  are  apt  to  belittle 
all  nations  but  their  own.  Foreigners  were  not  more 
unfair  to  Americans  than  Americans  were  to  foreign 
ers.  The  opportunities  for  observation  of  the  trav 
elers  must  also  be  remembered  when  we  read  their 
opinions.  Some  of  them  told  of  what  they  saw  from 
the  stage-coaches  and  learned  from  their  fellow-pas 
sengers  and  at  the  taverns  of  the  road,  and  knew 
nothing  more.  A  dance  held  in  the  public  room  of  an 
inn  they  recorded  as  a  good  example  of  the  amuse 
ments  of  the  people,  and  the  drunkenness  which  was 
common  among  the  frequenters  of  a  place  whose  chief 
business  was  the  sale  of  liquor  was  cited  as  an  illus 
tration  of  their  habits.  Thus  one  writer,  Thomas 
Ashe,  an  Englishman,  said  that  bigotry  was  the  char 
acteristic  of  the  people  in  the  Northeastern  states; 
that  society  in  the  South  was  in  a  shameful  state  of 
degeneracy;  that  the  people  were  turbulent,  aban 
doned  Christians,  unnatural  fathers,  and  treacherous 
friends ;  that  there  was  no  eloquence  among  the  public 
men;  and  so  forth.  His  observations  were  valueless 
because  they  contained  hardly  a  trace  of  truth.  Par 
kinson,  another  Englishman,  wrote  more  discrimi 
natingly,  but  hardly  less  severely.  We  were  avaricious 
and  unscrupulous,  he  said,  and  no  transaction  brought 
discredit  on  a  man  unless  he  lost  money  by  it.  This 
judgment  was  expressed  by  most  commentators. 

28  - 


OURSELVES  AS  OTHERS  SAW  US 

Isaac  Candler,  an  Englishman  who  was  pleasantly 
entertained  on  his  travels  and  wrote  sympathetically, 
said  we  were  less  sober  than  the  people  of  the  Conti 
nent,  and  about  on  a  level  in  this  respect  with  the 
Irish.  Profanity  prevailed  to  a  shocking  extent. 
Gambling  was  extensively  practised,  especially  in  the 
South,  and  dueling  was  more  frequent  and  engaged 
in  for  less  cause  than  in  any  country  of  Europe.  The 
women  were  remarkably  virtuous.  The  people  were 
sociable,  even  to  the  point  of  familiarity,  and  were 
fond  of  asking  questions.  In  the  South  they  were 
irritable  and  quick  to  quarrel.  Hospitality  was  a 
prevalent  virtue,  and  the  manners  were  generally 
agreeable. 

Of  course,  the  Englishmen  took  notice  of  the  pecu 
liar  use  of  many  words  or  expressions  in  America— 
of  clever  for  worthy  or  obliging,  of  smart  for  clever,  of 
I  guess  for  I  suppose,  of  elegant  for  excellent,  of  I 
reckon  for  I  think  or  I  guess,  and  similar  colloquial 
isms;  but  several  critics  declared  the  mass  of  the 
people  spoke  better  English  than  the  mass  of  English 
men,  and  that  nowhere  was  anything  heard  as  bad 
as  the  whine  of  Suffolk,  the  chipping  of  words  of 
Yorkshire,  and  the  guttural  of  Newcastle.  Americans 
did  not  find  an  h  at  the  beginning  of  words  where  it 
did  not  exist  nor  overlook  it  when  it  was  there.  The 
common  pronunciation  was  that  of  educated  Lon 
doners.  They  were  poor  conversationalists,  however, 
and  inattentive  to  details.  They  had  no  taste  in 
architecture  and  ornamentation,  but  the  women 
dressed  becomingly. 

Perhaps  the  severest  of  all  the  critics,  because  there 

29 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

was  so  much  of  truth  in  his  criticisms,  was  Felix  de 
Beaujour,  a  cultivated  Frenchman  who  made  a  pains 
taking  study  of  the  country.  Philadelphia,  he  said, 
was  not  only  remarkable  for  the  regularity  of  its 
streets,  but  for  the  cleanliness  of  the  houses.  New 
York  wore  a  smiling  aspect  and  was  like  a  continental 
town;  Boston  and  Baltimore  were  like  English  towns; 
Charleston,  Norfolk,  and  New  Orleans  resembled  the 
towns  of  the  West  Indies.  Of  the  new  capital,  Wash 
ington,  all  he  could  say  was  that  it  resembled  "those 
Russian  towns  traced  in  the  deserts  of  Tartary,  in 
whose  inclosures  we  behold  nothing  but  naked  fields 
and  a  few  glimpses  of  houses."  As  for  national  char 
acter,  the  Americans  were  a  mixture  of  people  sprung 
from  so  many  different  nations  that  thus  far  they 
had  none.  They  had  as  much  vanity  as  the  oldest 
nations  in  Europe.  The  latter  boasted  of  what  they 
had  done  and  the  Americans  of  what  they  could  do. 
They  had  no  habits  of  their  own.  In  the  Northern 
states  they  were  bold  and  enterprising,  in  the  Middle 
states  light  and  inconstant,  in  the  South  heedless 
and  lazy.  "A  Bostonian  would  go  in  search  of  his 
fortune  to  the  bottom  of  hell;  a  Virginian  would  not 
go  across  the  road  to  seek  it."  In  the  North  one 
found  English  manners ;  in  the  Middle  region  a  thou 
sand  shades  had  colored  English  manners;  in  the  South 
the  manners  were  those  of  West-Indians.  The  plant 
er's  life  was  a  continual  scene  of  indolence  and  dis 
sipation.  Horse-racing  and  cock-fighting  were  his 
outdoor  sports,  gaming  and  drinking  his  diversions 
indoors.  In  the  interior  west  of  the  Alleghanies  man 
ners  were  simpler  and  purer  than  in  other  parts.  Gain 

30 


OURSELVES  AS  OTHERS  SAW  US 

was  the  subject  of  conversation  among  all  men  and 
the  level  of  all  their  actions.  There  was  no  country 
in  the  world  where  there  was  less  generosity  of  senti 
ment,  less  charm  of  life.  Everything  was  sacrificed 
to  interest.  All  disinterested  acts,  all  talents  purely 
agreeable,  were  looked  upon  with  contempt.  An  un 
bridled  love  of  money  was  the  spring  of  the  Republic. 
Everything  favored  a  vile  cupidity.  Bankruptcy  in 
the  commercial  towns  was  often  the  shortest  and 
surest  roa.d  to  fortune.  In  the  country  and  the  vil 
lages  good  and  upright  characters  were  as  common 
in  the  United  States  as  they  were  elsewhere;  but 
high-spirited  and  lofty  souls,  great  and  noble  char 
acters,  were  rarer.  The  people  had,  however,  a  love 
of  liberty,  were  industrious,  and  had  high  regard  for 
the  laws.  The  women  were  better  than  the  men. 
They  were  beautiful  until  they  were  twenty-five  years 
old,  when  their  forms  changed,  and  by  the  time  they 
were  thirty  their  charms  had  disappeared.  They  en 
joyed  great  liberty  till  they  married.  Then  they 
buried  themselves  in  their  families  and  appeared  to 
live  only  for  them.  As  wives  they  were  faithful  and 
thrifty  and  had  none  of  the  vices,  but  all  of  the  vir 
tues,  of  their  husbands.  The  social  life  was  joyless 
and  monotonous.  He  thought  the  Americans  were 
called  upon  to  act  a  great  part  in  the  world,  if  they 
did  not  make  their  appearance  on  the  stage  too  soon. 
The  danger  was  that  they  might  become  the  victims 
of  their  own  dissensions  and  dissolve  before  they  had 
formed  into  the  body  of  a  nation.  Mongaret,  another 
Frenchman,  confirmed  the  general  opinion  that  the 
Southerners  were  more  dissipated  than  the  North- 

31 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

erners,  and  more  fond  of  gaming.  He,  also,  thought 
the  women  pretty  and  amiable.  Montule,  also  a 
French  traveler,  agreed  on  this  point.  He  especially 
remarked  the  love  of  pleasure  of  the  people  of  Louisi 
ana  and  the  deplorable  frequency  there  of  duels  en 
gaged  in  for  insufficient  cause.  A  careful  estimate 
was  made  by  Mackenzie,  a  Scotchman.  He  thought 
that  the  people  of  New  England  were  inquisitive, 
that  the  descendants  of  the  Dutch  especially  were 
avaricious,  that  the  laboring  -  classes  were  better 
dressed  and  more  independent  than  those  of  England, 
but  the  genteeler  classes  were  more  slovenly.  The 
women  were  handsome,  but  not  so  healthy  in  appear 
ance  as  the  English,  and  their  beauty  was  short-lived. 
The  people  of  the  Northern  states  were  plain,  honest, 
and  industrious;  the  planters  were  lazy  and  self- 
indulgent.  There  was  a  deep  prejudice  between  the 
people  of  the  sections.  Tobacco  was  used  to  excess 
by  all  classes,  and  they  were  generally  addicted  to 
dram-drinking.  They  carried  the  spirit  of  indepen 
dence  to  an  extreme  and  lacked  courtesy.  There  was 
a  dead-level  of  intelligence  in  the  United  States,  the 
gradation  of  intellect  which  existed  in  England  being 
unknown.  The  laborer  was  more  intelligent  than  his 
brother  in  Europe;  but  the  middle  classes  were  not 
so  well  informed. 

A  few  German  and  one  or  two  Italian  and  Spanish 
travelers  recorded  their  impressions,  but  they  are  un 
important.  On  certain  points  the  foreigners  were 
agreed,  and  these  must  be  taken  as  being  American 
characteristics  palpable  to  outsiders.  We  were  do 
mestic  in  our  tastes  and  fond  of  family  life.  Our 

32 


OURSELVES  AS  OTHERS  SAW  US 

women  were  beautiful  and  good.  We  were  inquisi 
tive;  we  were  inordinately  devoted  to  making  money; 
we  were  too  fond  of  strong  drink;  we  were  too  fond 
of  gambling;  we  were  industrious  in  the  North,  but 
lazy  in  the  South;  intelligence  was  well  diffused  among 
us,  but  we  produced  few  great  characters;  we  neg 
lected  the  light  and  agreeable  things  of  life.  They 
were  fond  of  quoting  this  remark:  "American  theory 
is  at  least  two  centuries  in  advance  of  American 
practice." 

As  for  the  country  itself,  those  who  passed  over  it 
hardly  saw  more  than  the  landscape  and  generally 
underestimated  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  while  they 
appreciated  the  wonderful  scenery. 

As  I  have  said,  liberty  was  not  the  fashion  for  the 
moment,  so  the  American  government  came  in  for 
condemnation  because  it  had  not  power  enough,  es 
pecially  in  the  executive  branch.  The  general  verdict 
was  that  the  President  ought  to  be  given  greater  per 
manency  of  office,  that  there  was  an  excess  of  liberty, 
the  people  being  all  and  the  government  nothing. 
The  elections  were  thought  to  be  too  frequent.  As 
a  consequence  the  Representatives  were  too  dependent 
on  their  constituents  and  too  local  in  their  policy. 
Moreover,  the  constituencies  were  kept  in  an  incessant 
turmoil  of  corrupting  electioneering.  The  Union  was 
in  danger  of  breaking,  because  of  the  growth  of  sec 
tional  feeling  engendered  by  the  existence  of  slavery 
in  one  part.  The  West,  too,  when  it  became  powerful 
would  probably  separate  from  the  East. 

3 


VI 

AS   WE    SAW   OURSELVES 

WHEN  we  came  to  judge  ourselves  Northerners 
and  Southerners  were  prejudiced  in  their  esti 
mate  of  one  another,  and  they  then  constituted  the 
two  great  divisions  of  the  people,  the  new  West  not 
yet  having  formed  into  a  separate  group.  Southern 
ers  had  no  sympathy  with  the  hard  frugality  of  the 
North,  tlaving  slaves  for  laborers,  large  holdings  of 
land  by  individuals,  and  a  climate  without  a  long, 
rigorous  winter,  frugality  was  not  necessary  with 
them.  They  found  the  leveling  of  classes  of  the  North 
disagreeable,  being  accustomed  to  an  aristocratic  or 
ganization  of  society  with  a  recognized  higher  class. 
They  were  fond  of  saying  that  there  were  few  gentle 
men  in  the  North,  and  they  used  the  word  '  'gentlemen" 
in  the  same  sense  that  Englishmen  used  it.  They 
superintended  their  farms  or  engaged  in  professional 
pursuits,  and  the  interests  of  a  commercial  people 
and  of  farmers  who  worked  their  own  land  seemed 
petty  to  them.  In  short,  they  thought  themselves 
superior  to  their  Northern  neighbors.  These  remarks 
apply  to  the  ruling  class  of  Southerners,  who  owned 
the  property  and  shaped  the  destiny  of  their  part  of 
the  country.  The  poorer  classes  had  no  power,  but 
they,  too,  disliked  the  Northerners.  They  knew  very 
little  about  them  and  commonly  associated  them  in 

34 


AS  WE  SAW  OURSELVES 

their  minds  with  the  Yankee  peddlers  who  came 
among  them  occasionally  and  cheated  them.  The 
Southerners  were  often  men  of  affairs,  but  they  were 
seldom  writers,  and  the  product  of  their  printing- 
presses  was  small.  The  result  is  that  the  record  of 
their  opinions  is  meager. 

The  home  of  the  writers  was  then,  as  it  is  now,  New 
England,  and  an  investigator  has  not  far  to  go  to 
learn  what  they  thought  of  themselves  and  of  all  other 
Americans.  Even  the  most  cautious  and  fair  among 
them  were  outspoken  in  their  reprobation  of  slavery 
and  the  effect  it  had  upon  the  people  of  the  South, 
making  them  lazy  and  arrogant,  causing  them  to 
pursue  pleasure  too  eagerly,  thus  encouraging  gaming 
and  conviviality,  giving  a  tone  to  their  character 
which  placed  them  at  a  disadvantage  when  they 
were  compared  with  the  people  of  the  North.  Com 
ing  to  more  specific  judgment,  they  found  the  planters 
of  Maryland  imperious  and  proud,  "an  almost  nec 
essary  consequence  of  slave-keeping,"  but  hospit 
able,  with  manners  as  polished  as  those  of  English 
country  gentlemen,  and  generally  of  liberal  education. 
The  Virginians  west  of  the  Blue  Ridge  were  indus 
trious  and  temperate ;  east  of  the  mountains  the  great 
planters  were  hospitable  and  of  independent  spirit, 
but  idle  and  intemperate  in  their  habits,  and  the 
lower  orders  were  ignorant  and  abject.  Here  there 
was  great  disparity  of  fortunes  and  intellectual  ac 
quirements.  The  North-Carolinians  were  hospitable, 
but  had  no  taste  for  learning,  and  temperance  and 
industry  could  not  be  reckoned  among  their  virtues. 
Among  the  lower  classes  the  barbarous  custom  of 

35 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

rough-and-tumble  fighting  prevailed,  as  it  did  in  the 
rest  of  the  South  and  the  West  and  in  a  less  degree  in 
the  wilder  portions  of  all  the  states,  when  the  adver 
saries  bit,  scratched,  and  kicked  as  well  as  punched 
each  other,  and  tried  to  blind  each  other  by  the  hor 
rible  practice  of  "gouging,"  which  consisted  of  forcing 
a  man's  eyes  out  of  their  sockets  with  the  knuckles. 
This  practice  excited  a  great  deal  of  comment,  but 
the  extent  to  which  it  prevailed  has  probably  been 
exaggerated.  North  Carolina  was  said  to  be  remark 
able  for  the  early  marriages  of  some  of  its  citizens, 
grandmothers  not  more  than  twenty-seven  years  old. 
being  occasionally  met  with.  In  South  Carolina  the 
fertility  of  the  soil  made  the  acquisition  of  wealth  easy. 
Many  people  were  rich  and  addicted  to  convivial 
pleasures  and  licentiousness.  They  were  naturally 
quick  and  vivacious,  but  lacked  enterprise  and  per 
severance.  They  were  open-handed  in  giving,  highly 
polished,  and  well  educated.  The  women  lacked  the 
bloom  of  the  North,  but  had  an  engaging  softness 
and  delicacy  of  appearance  and  manners  and  were 
possessed  of  polite  and  elegant  accomplishments. 
Charleston  was  famous  for  the  gaiety  and  conviviality 
of  the  inhabitants,  and  many  families  there  made  a 
great  display  of  wealth  and  taste.  The  Georgians 
were  generally  pronounced  to  be  lazy,  a  result  of  the 
hot  climate.  Of  Louisiana  little  was  known ;|but 
the  peculiar  population,  in  which  people  of  French 
origin  predominated,  was  looked  upon  as  essentially 
foreign  and  not  yet  within  the  circle  of  American  life. 
Of  the  character  of  the  people  of  New  England 
the  highest  opinions  were  entertained;  and  justly, 

36 


AS  WE  SAW  OURSELVES 

although  they  came  from  New  England  men.  There, 
they  said,  the  people  were  nearly  all  of  English  de 
scent,  and  the  English  language  had  been  preserved 
pure  and  free  from  the  corruptions  which  had  crept 
into  it  in  the  Middle  States,  where  the  proportion 
of  foreign-born  residents  was  so  large.  The  popula 
tion  were  mostly  of  the  middle  class  and  escaped  the 
vices  of  the  rich  and  the  sufferings  of  the  poor.  They 
were  hardy  and  independent,  and  so  jealous  of  their 
liberties  that  they  were  often  the  victims  of  imag 
inary  grievances  and  groudless  suspicions  against  the 
government.  They  were  accused  of  impertinent  in- 
quisitiveness,  but  it  was  really  only  a  form  of  their 
desire  for  knowledge.  It  was  true  that  they  were 
frugal  in  their  personal  expenses;  but  they  were  lib 
eral  in  expenditures  for  public  purposes.  Especially 
were  the  people  of  Connecticut  fortunate,  for  the  in 
dividual  holdings  of  land  were  small.  There  was  a 
degree  of  political  tranquillity  in  that  state  greater 
than  in  any  other.  They  enjoyed  as  perfect  indepen 
dence  and  equality  as  any  people  in  the  world.  But 
the  state  scandalized  the  country  by  the  number  of 
divorces  it  granted.  They  were  the  consequence  of 
a  law  passed  in  1667  permitting  divorce  for  three 
years'  wilful  desertion  by  the  husband  or  the  wife. 
Many  were  arranged  by  mutual  understanding.  The 
immigrants  who  were  building  up  the  new  West  came 
largely  from  New  England,  so  it  could  appropriately 
be  called  a  nursery  of  men.  As  for  the  women,  they 
were  educated  in  housewifery,  assiduous  in  household 
employments,  and  occupied  their  leisure  hours  in 
reading  books  of  useful  information. 

37 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

The  people  of  the  Middle  States  presented  varia 
tions  which  made  it  difficult  to  characterize  them  as 
a  whole.  In  New  York  the  Dutch  descendants  were 
noted  for  their  conservatism  and  refusal  to  adopt  im 
provements  in  agriculture.  The  large  landholders 
lived  like  Englishmen.  There  were  many  New  Eng 
land  people,  and  the  most  prevalent  characteristics 
were  those  of  New  England.  New  York  City  had  a 
social  life  as  agreeable  as  any  on  the  Continent.  Al 
ready  the  turbulence  and  corruption  of  its  elections 
were  remarked  upon.  In  Pennsylvania  the  popula 
tion  came  from  so  many  sources  that  general  remarks 
could  not  be  applied  to  it.  The  people  were  for  the 
most  part  plain,  frugal,  and  industrious,  these  being 
the  qualities  of  the  Germans  to  a  notable  degree. 
There  had  been  a  great  deal  of  enterprise  displayed, 
and  much  over-trading  in  consequence,  with  ruinous 
results.  Of  New  Jersey  there  was  a  general  verdict 
that  the  people  were  industrious,  but  paid  little  at 
tention  to  education.  The  western  part  of  the  state 
traded  with  Philadelphia,  and  East  Jersey  with  New 
York,  so  that  manners  in  the  former  were  like  those 
of  Philadelphia  and  in  the  latter  like  those  of  New 
York. 

As  for  the  people  of  the  new  states  and  the  West, 
they  were  like  the  people  of  the  states  from  which 
they  had  come.  Kentuckians  resembled  Virginians; 
Tennesseeans,  North-Carolinians;  and  the  settlers  in 
Ohio  were  like  the  people  of  Connecticut. 

The  hard  judgment  which  the  people  of  the  two 
sections  rendered  of  each  other  was  due  to  the  pres 
ence  of  slavery  in  one  section. 


VII 

A  MAN'S   BODY  AT  AUCTION 

S  this  is  a  true  picture  of  our  country  one  hundred 
years  ago,  a  chapter  on  slavery  must  be  written ; 
but  the  task  is  not  so  repulsive  as  it  would  be  if  we 
were  considering  slavery  in  America  forty  years  later, 
when  intelligent  and  well-meaning  men  were  extolling 
it  as  a  beneficent  institution  and  trying  to  make  it 
national  in  scope.  In  1815  it  was  considered  every 
where  to  be  a  local  problem.  It  had  existed  in  all  of 
the  colonies  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution;  but  each 
of  the  Northern  states  had  abolished  it  by  a  gradual 
process,  the  first  being  Massachusetts  and  Pennsyl 
vania  in  1 780  and  the  last  New  Jersey  in  1804.  There 
after  it  existed  only  in  the  Southern  states,  including 
Delaware,  and  the  few  slaves  still  remaining  in  the 
Northern  states  were  a  negligible  quantity.  Nobody  in 
the  South  defended  it.  The  greatest  apostle  it  had  at 
a  later  period,  John  C.  Calhoun,  had  already  entered 
upon  his  public  career,  being  one  of  the  leaders  of  the 
House,  but  no  word  of  defense  of  slavery  came  from 
him  until  some  years  later.  George  Mason's  denunci 
ation  of  it  in  the  federal  convention  of  1787  was  a 
correct  statement  of  Southern  sentiment  then  and 
for  many  years  afterward.  "  Slavery  discourages 
arts  and  manufactures,"  he  said.  "The  poor  despise 

39 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

labor  when  performed  by  slaves.  They  prevent  the 
immigration  of  whites,  who  really  enrich  and  strength 
en  a  country.  They  produce  the  most  pernicious 
effect  on  manners.  Every  master  of  slaves  is  born  a 
petty  tyrant.  They  bring  the  judgment  of  Heaven 
on  a  country.  As  nations  cannot  be  rewarded  or 
punished  in  the  next  world,  they  must  be  in  this.  By 
an  inevitable  chain  of  causes  and  effects  Providence 
punishes  national  sins  by  national  calamities."  There 
is  not  much  to  add  to  this  sweeping  paragraph  from  a 
Virginia  planter  and  slaveholder. 

As  for  the  negroes  themselves,  they  were  better  off 
as  slaves  in  America  than  they  had  been  as  savages 
in  Africa,  and  none  of  them  wished  to  be  sent  back. 
Their  morals  were  lax,  their  education  was  neglected, 
and  their  religious  practices  were  crude;  but  in  all 
these  respects  they  were  far  in  advance  of  their  fathers 
and  brothers  on  the  Gold  Coast.  So  far  as  food,  medi 
cal  attendance,  clothing,  and  the  amount  of  work 
exacted  of  them  were  concerned,  speaking  generally, 
they  fared  as  well  as  the  lowest  class  of  free  laborers. 
Again  speaking  generally,  they  had  no  feeling  of  ani 
mosity  toward  their  masters.  Although  the  masters 
sat  in  deathly  fear  that  they  would  mutiny,  subse 
quent  events  showed  that  there  was  never  any  real 
danger  from  this  source.  For  the  most  part  they 
were  treated  humanely  and  even  indulgently.  If 
the  planter  lived  on  his  plantation  he  did  not  allow 
the  overseer  to  ill-use  them.  The  house-servants  near 
ly  always  experienced  kindness,  and  between  them 
and  their  masters  and  mistresses  there  were  strong 
ties  of  affection.  Public  opinion  strongly  reprobated 

40 


A  MAN'S  BODY  AT  AUCTION 

cruelty  to  the  slaves.  The  laws  recognized  them  as 
having  some  of  the  rights  of  men.  Under  the  na 
tional  law  five  negroes  were  equal  to  three  whites  in 
computing  the  representation  in  the  Lower  House 
of  Congress.  In  the  states  very  severe  laws  existed 
designed  to  keep  them  in  subjection;  but  the  laws 
protected  them  also.  The  masters  had  no  power  of 
life  and  death  over  them,  and  could  be  punished  for 
excessive  cruelty.  Nevertheless,  individual  cases  of 
cruelty  from  the  coarser  members  of  society  and  those 
having  charge  of  the  slaves  of  others  were  common. 
But  above  all  other  cruel  things  that  they  had  to 
endure  was  the  cruel  fact  that  they  were  slaves.  Kind 
treatment,  affection,  improvement  in  mental,  material, 
and  moral  condition,  easy  work — none  of  these  things 
could  cause  them  to  forget,  even  for  an  instant,  that 
they  were  bought,  bred,  and  sold  like  brutes,  and 
that  they  were  men.  Nor  could  any  circumstance  of 
expediency  and  the  knowledge  that  they  were  not 
responsible  for  the  imposition  of  the  iniquity,  nor  any 
appeals  to  history  and  the  Gospel,  cause  the  owners 
to  forget  that  it  was  a  wrong  for  one  man  to  hold  an 
other  in  bondage.  These  owners  were  proud  of  their 
record  in  the  Revolution;  they  regarded  themselves 
as  peculiarly  the  guardians  of  freedom;  they  were 
orthodox  in  their  religious  views  and  believed  that  the 
earth  was  made  especially  for  man.  They  held  the 
sentiment  which  Walt  Whitman  wrote  sixty  years  later : 

A  man's  body  at  auction  (For  before  the  war  I  often  go  to 
the  slave  mart  and  watch  the  sale). 

I  help  the  auctioneer,  the  sloven  does  not  half  know  his  busi 
ness.  Gentlemen,  look  on  this  wonder: 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Whatever  the  bid  of  the  bidders  they  cannot  be  high  enough 
for  it. 

For  it  the  globe  lay  preparing  quintillions  of  years  without  one 
animal  or  plant. 

For  it  the  revolving  cycles  truly  and  steadily  rolTd. 

The  old  President  had  been  the  master  mind  of  the 
convention  which  framed  the  Constitution  and  had  con 
tended  against  any  recognition  in  it  of  slavery,  and 
the  word,  if  not  the  fact,  was  excluded.  He  had  agreed 
then  with  George  Mason's  views  which  I  have  quoted, 
and  he  never  changed  his  mind.  Henry  Clay,  also 
born  in  Virginia  and  a  citizen  of  a  Southern  state, 
already  the  leader  of  a  great  party,  denounced  slavery 
boldly.  David  Ramsay,  of  South  Carolina,  published 
his  history  of  the  United  States  in  1818,  in  which  he 
said  that  slavery  produced  idleness,  which  was  the 
parent  of  every  vice,  and,  while  it  caused  a  few  men 
to  grow  rich,  depressed  the  community  to  a  low  sta 
tion  in  the  scale  of  national  greatness.  "Unhappy 
are  the  people,"  he  said,  "where  the  original  decree 
of  Heaven  that  man  should  eat  his  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  his  brow  is  by  any  means  whatever  generally 
eluded." 

These  are  examples  which  could  be  multiplied  in 
definitely.  Instances  of  the  defense  of  slavery  at  this 
time  cannot  be  found,  for  there  are  none. 

But  if  everybody  disapproved  of  the  institution, 
why  was  it  continued?  The  answer  is  that  no  good 
plan  for  getting  rid  of  it  was  proposed  and  none  could 
be  devised.  If  the  negroes  were  freed  they  must  be 
removed,  because  they  were  a  permanently  inferior 
race  which  could  not  fuse  with  the  white  race.  There 

42 


A  MAN'S  BODY  AT  AUCTION 

must  come  a  complete  readjustment  of  society,  and 
problems  worse  than  slavery  would  arise.  The  slaves 
represented  the  chief  property  of  the  South.  Who  was 
to  pay  for  them  if  they  ceased  to  be  property?  The 
expense  would  be  tremendous  and  the  free  states 
showed  no  desire  to  share  it.  A  hundred  ways  of  free 
ing  them  were  discussed,  but  none  seemed  practica 
ble.  Moreover,  there  were  a  great  many  people  who 
did  not  want  them  freed.  They  did  not  approve  of 
slavery  morally  or  theoretically,  but  they  preferred 
it  to  the  prospects  which  freedom  opened.  So  when 
emancipation  projects  came  to  the  issue  public  opin 
ion  would  not  support  them. 

Mason,  Madison,  and  Clay,  were  slaveholders. 
So  were  John  Gaillard,  the  Vice-President ;  James 
Monroe,  the  Secretary  of  State;  and  George  W. 
Campbell,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  Gaillard 
was  president  pro  tempore  of  the  Senate;  Clay  was 
speaker  of  the  House  till  his  place  was  taken  in  June 
of  1814  by  Langdon  Cheves,  of  South  Carolina,  an 
other  slaveholder.  The  leaders  of  the  House  were 
Calhoun,  William  Lowndes,  and  Felix  Grundy,  all 
slaveholders.  William  H.  Crawford,  of  Georgia,  was 
Minister  to  France;  Thomas  Sumter,  Jr.,  of  South 
Carolina,  to  Portugal;  two  of  the  four  representa 
tives  of  the  United  States  to  foreign  powers  were 
slaveholders.  The  proportion  was  about  what  it  had 
been  since  the  beginning  of  the  government.  Three 
of  the  four  Presidents,  two  of  the  five  Vice-Presidents, 
fourteen  of  the  twenty-six  Presidents  of  the  Senate, 
five  of  the  ten  Speakers  of  the  House,  had  been  slave 
holders.  Up  to  the  time  of  Lincoln's  election  in  1861, 

43 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

a  period  of  seventy-two  years,  the  President's  chair 
was  occupied  by  a  slaveholder  for  fifty  years — two- 
thirds  of  the  time. 

Surely,  then,  if  we  believe  that  the  United  States 
advanced  in  those  years,  we  must  believe  that  there 
was  something  of  good  in  the  institution  under  which 
those  who  governed  it  while  it  advanced  were  born 
and  reared.  That  good  can  be  stated  in  a  word.  It 
was  the  companion  of  the  evils  of  the  system.  As 
George  Mason  said,  every  man  born  a  master  of  slaves 
was  born  a  petty  tyrant ;  and  as  Ramsay  said,  he  was 
born  to  idleness  and  to  wealth  without  laboring  for  it. 
Thus  there  arose  a  class  of  men  accustomed  to  exercise 
authority  over  others  from  their  infancy,  having  time 
to  study  and  to  undertake  public  affairs,  having  the 
power  and  prestige  of  wealth — in  short,  a  governing 
class.  The  President  was  one  of  them.  He  held  his 
first  public  office  when  he  was  twenty-five  years  old, 
and  thereafter  was  almost  continuously  in  the  service 
of  the  state  or  the  nation  for  more  than  forty  years. 
Beyond  conducting  the  large  farm  which  he  inherited 
from  his  father,  he  followed  no  gainful  employment. 
Another  was  William  Lowdnes.  A  few  weeks  after  he 
was  married,  when  he  was  only  twenty  years  old,  his 
wife's  father  advised  her  to  learn  to  keep  the  plantation 
books,  so  that  she  could  take  charge  of  her  husband's 
affairs.  ' '  Before  many  years, ' '  said  he,  * '  Lowndes  will 
undoubtedly  be  called  to  public  life."  He  entered 
the  state  legislature  when  he  was  twenty-four  years 
old  and  remained  in  public  affairs  until  a  few  months 
before  his  untimely  death  at  the  age  of  forty. 

That  country  was  fortunate  which  had  in  its  gov- 

44 


A  MAN'S  BODY  AT  AUCTION 

ernment  men  like  Madison  and  Lowndes.  It  was  not 
to  be  expected  that  many  of  their  colleagues  should 
be  their  peers — that  there  should  be  many  as  pro 
found  scholars  of  government  as  Madison  or  as  effec 
tive  legislators  as  Lowndes — but  they  had  worthy 
associates  in  John  Marshall,  the  Chief  Justice ;  James 
Monroe;  James  Barbour,  Senator  from  Virginia;  Fe 
lix  Grundy,  Representative  from  Tennessee;  Wil 
liam  Gaston  and  Nathaniel  Macon,  Representatives 
from  North  Carolina;  Calhoun;  Clay;  Cheves;  and 
many  others,  all  Southern  slaveholders. 

One  influence  that  operated  to  produce  men  of  this 
type  was  the  high  character  of  the  mothers  who  bore 
them  and  the  wives  who  ruled  their  homes.  Among 
the  wealthy  ruling  class  the  side  of  slavery  which  the 
women  saw  developed  their  compassion  and  unsel 
fishness.  They  were  the  ones  who  improved  the 
negroes'  morals,  taught  them  religion,  and  attended 
to  their  bodily  welfare.  Before  marriage  their  lives 
were  idle  enough,  but  their  pleasures  were  in 
nocent.  They  married  early  and  had  large  families. 
They  did  not  cultivate  their  minds  by  much  book 
learning,  but  their  characters  were  developed  by  their 
duties  and  responsibilities.  Like  Mrs.  Lowndes,  some 
of  them  managed  the  business  affairs  of  their  planta 
tions,  and  most  of  them  had  large  households  with 
many  domestic  servants,  and  dispensed  a  lavish  hos 
pitality.  The  men  might  be  coarse  among  men,  but 
their  homes  were  refined.  Among  the  pernicious 
effects  that  slavery  had  on  manners  was  an  increasing 
number  of  mulattoes.  Sensuality  among  the  lower- 
minded  men  degraded  the  morals  of  the  negro  women; 

45 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

and  at  the  same  time,  removing  the  white  women 
from  dangers  from  these  men,  left  them  to  live  in  an 
atmosphere  of  purity.  The  men  associated  the  women 
of  their  order  with  their  higher  and  better  ideas,  do 
mestic  pleasures,  charitableness,  religion  and  virtue. 
Although  the  society  was  idle  and  wealthy,  it  was  re 
markably  free  from  domestic  scandals. 

The  institution  depressed  the  mass  of  the  people 
in  the  community,  but  elevated  individuals.  Tak 
ing  it  with  its  evil  and  its  good — and  the  evil  far  out 
weighed  the  good — it  must  be  recognized  that  it 
played  an  important  part  in  forming  the  national 
character  and  shaping  the  national  destiny. 

It  created  a  fundamentally  different  civilization 
from  that  of  the  North.  Here  was  the  strange  spec 
tacle  of  a  country  one-half  of  which  based  its  pros 
perity  on  slave  labor  and  the  other  half  of  which  owed 
its  advancement  to  free  labor.  Antagonism  was  cer 
tain  to  arise.  The  Farmer's  Almanac  for  1814,  printed 
in  Boston,  had  these  remarks  to  make  for  the  month 
of  November : 

It  has  been  said  that  we  cannot  live  without  the  corn,  rice, 
etc.,  of  the  Southern  planter;  but  the  fact  is  if  we  cultivate  our 
land  as  we  ought  we  shall  have  abundance  of  breadstuff,  and 
there  will  be  no  need  of  depending  upon  the  labor  of  the  poor 
and  miserable  slaves  of  the  South  for  our  maintenance. 

If  the  farmers  felt  so  strongly  on  the  subject,  it 
was  plain  that  the  seeds  of  disunion  sentiments  be 
cause  of  opposition  to  slavery  were  already  planted. 
They  had  not  yet,  however,  appeared  aboveground. 
It  was  only  a  few  years  since  the  Northern  states 
had  emancipated  their  slaves,  and  it  was  believed  the 

46 


A  MAN'S  BODY  AT  AUCTION 

Southern  states  would,  one  after  the  other,  follow  the 
example.  At  any  rate,  there  was  no  belief  that  slavery 
would  spread.  It  was  regarded  strictly  as  a  state  in 
stitution  and  each  Southern  state  might  abolish  it, 
as  each  Northern  state,  acting  by  itself,  had  done. 
This  was  the  feeling  in  1815,  and  whatever  dissatis 
faction  on  the  part  of  any  faction  existed  with  the 
Union  was  not  then  based  upon  the  existence  or  non- 
existence  of  slavery. 


VIII 

COACH    AND    SLOOP 

NOW  the  people  of  the  United  States  were  more 
nearly  united  after  the  Treaty  of  Ghent  was 
signed  than  they  had  been  at  any  time  since  the  close 
of  the  Revolution,  but  they  still  looked  at  many  things 
which  were  really  national  from  a  sectional  point  of 
view.  Because  the  sections  were  so  far  away  from 
each  other,  and  knew  so  little  of  each  other,  they  were 
jealous  and  were  constantly  playing  for  advantage. 
One  example  of  the  feeling  which,  while  it  was  dimin 
ishing  and  was  not  universal,  was  prevalent  will  suf 
fice.  Because  the  capital  had  been  located  on  the 
border  of  Virginia  a  writer  said  it  was  "calculated  to 
entail  upon  the  state  of  Virginia  the  chief  sway  and 
influence  over  all  the  rest  of  the  Union,  and  to  check 
the  career  of  the  Northern  and  Middle  states,  whose 
far  superior  capacities,  both  physical  and  moral,  in 
population,  wealth,  industry,  and  intelligence,  would 
eventually  sink  Virginia  into  the  rank  of  a  second-rate 
sovereignty,  if  the  seat  of  the  national  government  were 
on  the  Northern  line  and  the  Northern  states  were  per 
mitted  to  avail  themselves  of  all  their  agricultural  and 
commercial  advantages.  Whereas  now,  the  Virginians 
having  the  seat  of  government  within  their  own  terri 
tory,  made  it  the  focus  of  their  own  political  intrigues ; 

48 


COACH  AND  SLOOP 

and  by  managing  the  people  withindoors  in  the  dif 
ferent  states,  they  return  nearly  what  members  to 
Congress  they  please,  and  induce  them  to  legislate 
in  accordance  with  the  scheme  of  Virginian  policy; 
which  never  has  been  favorable  to  large  and  liberal 
views  of  commercial  enterprise."  Thus  there  was  be 
lieved  to  be  antagonism  of  interests  between  the 
sections,  and  consequent  suspicion  of  motives  and 
harsh  accusations  instead  of  friendly  rivalry  and 
emulation  of  members  of  the  same  family  having 
common  interests.  It  was  inevitable  that  it  should 
be  so,  however,  when  the  people  lived  far  apart  and 
few  could  travel.  Between  New  York  and  Phila 
delphia,  the  two  chief  cities,  there  was  more  travel 
than  there  was  between  any  other  two  points  in  the 
country.  Four  stages  started  from  either  city  for 
the  other  each  day,  or  daily  except  Sundays.  A 
"Pilot  Stage"  left  every  morning  at  five  o'clock, 
and  traveled  the  distance  in  from  fourteen  to  sixteen 
hours.  The  fare  was  ten  dollars,  and  seven  passen 
gers  could  be  carried  in  summer.  The  "Commercial 
Stage,"  which  went  every  day  but  Sunday,  carried 
the  same  number.  It  left  New  York  at  seven  in 
the  morning,  stopped  at  Trenton  for  the  night,  and 
reached  Philadelphia  at  seven  the  following  morning. 
The  fare  was  six  dollars.  The  "Mail  Stage"  charged 
ten  dollars  and  carried  only  six  passengers.  It  left 
New  York  at  one  o'clock  every  afternoon  and  arrived 
in  Philadelphia  at  six  the  next  morning.  Carrying 
seven  passengers  at  ten  dollars  fare  for  each,  the  "Ex 
pedition  Stage"  left  New  York  daily  at  four  o'clock 
in  the  afternoon,  stopped  at  Bridgetown  or  Milton 
4  49 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

for  the  night,  and  arrived  in  Philadelphia  the  fol 
lowing  afternoon.  The  stage  office  was  at  No.  i 
Cortlandt  Street,  in  New  York,  and  the  stages  stopped 
in  Philadelphia  at  the  Mansion  House,  City  Hotel, 
and  Mail-Stage  Office  on  South  Third  Street.  They 
were  ferried  over  the  Hudson  River  at  New  York  to 
and  from  Powles  Hook,  or  Paulus's  Hook,  now  Jersey 
City,  from  the  foot  of  Cortlandt  Street,  by  the  steam 
ferry-boat.  The  boats  ran  every  half-hour  and  the 
fare  was  12  cents  for  a  foot  passenger,  carriages  being 
from  75  cents  to  $1.50.  Between  New  York  and 
Brooklyn  there  was  a  horse-boat  running  every  fifteen 
minutes,  the  fare  being  4  cents  per  passenger.  By 
this  boat  the  power  which  turned  the  paddle-wheel 
was  made  by  two  horses  on  a  treadmill.  The  stage 
coach  fare  did  not  include  the  road  expenses.  Break 
fast  cost  62 }4  cents;  dinner,  with  table  drink,  75 
cents;  supper  and  lodging,  87^  cents. 

In  addition  to  the  stages  were  three  steamboat 
routes  between  New  York  and  Philadelphia.  By  one 
the  boat  left  the  north  side  of  the  Battery  at  New  York 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  the  passengers  break 
fasting  at  Elizabethtown,  dining  at  Trenton,  and  ar 
riving  at  Philadelphia  in  the  evening.  The  fare  was 
$8.  By  another  the  passenger  left  New  York  at  ten 
in  the  morning,  dined  at  Bridgetown  or  Milton, 
supped  and  lodged  at  Trenton,  breakfasted  at  Bris 
tol,  arriving  in  Philadelphia  at  ten  or  eleven.  The 
fare  was  $5.50.  Yet  another,  charging  the  same  fare, 
left  New  York  at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  and 
reached  Philadelphia  at  ten  or  eleven  the  following 
morning.  The  boats  went  by  the  sound  and  canal 

50 


•* 

I? 


5  w 


. 

-  ,__—L_^>  ••.  m 


COACH  AND  SLOOP 

to  Elizabethtown  or  New  Brunswick,  where  stages 
carried  the  passengers  to  Trenton  or  Bristol,  some 
thirty  or  forty  miles,  when  they  took  another  boat 
on  the  Delaware,  arriving  in  Philadelphia  at  the  wharf 
on  the  north  side  of  Market  Street.  The  Olive  Branch 
Philadelphia  Steamboat  Line  left  New  York  at  7  A.M., 
went  to  Brunswick,  stopping  at  Blazing  Star  Ferry 
and  Perth  Amboy  on  the  way,  and  from  Brunswick 
to  Philadelphia,  being  due  at  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
morning.  Passengers  breakfasted  and  dined  on  board 
and  the  land  carriage  was  only  twenty-five  miles. 

There  was  much  travel  between  New  York  and 
Albany,  the  stage  taking  three  days,  but  the  steam 
boats,  of  which  there  were  now  several,  only  took 
twenty-four  hours.  Between  New  York  and  New 
Haven  there  was  a  good  water  route  which  Sound 
steamboats  traveled  in  eighteen  hours,  the  fare  being 
$5.  There  was  a  stage  between  New  York  and  Bos 
ton,  leaving  the  City  Hall  in  New  York  at  six  in 
the  morning,  going  through  Rye,  Stamford,  Nor- 
walk,  Fairfield,  and  New  Haven,  the  first  day ;  Hart 
ford,  Tolland,  and  Ashf ord  the  second  day ;  Pomfret, 
Thompson,  Douglass,  Mendon,  and  Dedham,  the 
third  day ;  arriving  at  the  Exchange  Coffee  House  in 
Boston  on  the  third  night.  The  fare  was  $16.  The 
fare  by  stage  from  New  York  to  Baltimore  was  $18, 
and  to  Washington,  $24. 

The  "Pilot  Stage"  from  New  York  belonged  to 
what  was  known  as  the  "Philadelphia,  Baltimore, 
and  Washington  City  Lines,"  which  had  a  continuous 
service  between  those  cities.  From  Washington  there 
was  a  popular  line  of  stages  to  Richmond.  It  started 

Si 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

in  the  morning  from  Mr.  Semmes's  tavern  in  George 
town,  took  up  passengers  at  O' Neil's  tavern,  the 
Franklin  House,  and  Indian?Queen  Hotel  in  Washing 
ton,  and  arrived  at  the  Bell  tavern  in  Richmond  in 
twenty-four  hours.  The  average  time  taken  on  the 
main  roads  by  the  mail-stages,  which  were  the  fastest, 
was,  between  the  great  commercial  towns,  60  to  120 
miles  in  twenty-four  hours,  by  cross-roads  40  miles  in 
twenty-four  hours.  From  this  it  can  be  seen  that  a 
journey  from  Washington  to  Boston,  which  was  460 
miles  distant  by  stage,  took  a  week,  and  that  to  go  from 
Washington  to  New  Orleans,  which,  by  the  quickest 
route  through  Richmond,  Raleigh  (N.  C.),  Columbia 
(S.  C.),  Augusta  (Ga.),  and  Mobile  (Ala.),  was  1,219 
miles  distant,  must  take  nearly  a  month.  There  was 
a  post-road  between  Washington  and  New  Orleans; 
there  was  one  even  from  Robbinstown  on  the  north 
east  boundary  in  the  province  of  Maine  to  St.  Mary's 
on  the  southeastern  extremity,  a  distance  of  1,733 
miles.  Of  course,  there  was  great  variation  in  the 
badness  of  the  roads.  Some  of  the  main  roads  run 
ning  out  from  the  larger  cities  were  fairly  good  in 
summer,  but  the  cross-roads  were  bad,  and  all  of  the 
roads  were  bad  part  of  the  time.  In  many  parts  of 
the  country  there  were  no  regular  stages  and  a  trav 
eler  must  use  his  own  carriage  and  horses  or  hire  them. 
The  easiest  and  quickest  mode  of  travel  was  by  horse 
back,  and  in  some  places  it  was  the  only  way  possible. 
The  expense  of  travel  was  considerable,  as  the  fares 
recited  show.  The  meals  varied  much  in  price,  but 
were  higher  between  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
than  elsewhere.  The  average  was  about  twenty-five 

52 


COACH  AND  SLOOP 

cents  for  each  one,  and  the  night's  lodging  cost  about 
one  dollar.  Travelers  incurred  less  danger  from  high 
waymen  than  there  was  in  England  at  this  time;  but 
a  single  rider  ran  great  risk  of  being  killed  by  Indians, 
unless  he  was  in  the  well-populated  part  of  the  coun 
try.  They  seldom  attacked  a  stage-coach,  however, 
and  on  the  frontier  traveling  was  generally  done  in 
parties  for  protection. 

The  coaches\^ere  strongly  built,  the  body  being 
swung  on  strong  leather  straps  for  springs,  but  they 
were  subjected  to  a  tremendous  strain,  ploughing 
through  deep  mud,  plunging  into  holes,  bumping 
over  rocks  and  stumps,  and  often  they  broke  down. 
Although  they  were  not  swung  high,  there  was  weight 
on  top  and  they  sometimes  overturned.  There  were 
few  bridges  over  the  streams  and  fording  some  of  them 
was  dangerous,  and  when  the  current  was  swollen  a 
coach  was  sometimes  swept  down  the  stream  and  the 
passengers  might  be  drowned.  If  a  passenger  were 
of  a  peaceful  disposition  he  need  fear  no  personal  mol 
estation;  but  if  he  were  truculent  he  might  have  a 
fight  at  almost  any  stopping-place,  for  at  the  inns 
were  many  bullies  and  rowdies  who  preferred  fight 
ing  to  any  other  form  of  excitement. 

The  conversation  on  the  road  and  in  the  inn  par 
lors  ranged  over  a  variety  of  subjects,  but  it  was 
quite  sure  after  a  time  to  come  around  to  political 
affairs,  where  all  met  on  common  ground  and  in  which 
all  took  an  interest.  Feeling  strongly  and  drinking 
as  they  talked,  a  conversation  often  rose  to  a  quarrel 
and  ended  in  a  fight.  The  inns  on  the  line  of  travel 
were  all  bad,  but  especially  so  in  the  South,  where 

53 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

there  was  so  much  entertaining  of  travelers  in  private 
houses  that  the  innkeepers  could  hardly  make  a  living. 
For  long  distances  and  for  transporting  families, 
travel  by  sea  was  preferable  to  land  travel,  where 
it  was  possible.  The  vessels  varied  greatly  in  size, 
being  sloops  or  schooners,  but  none  were  large.  Few 
of  them  carried  more  than  thirty  passengers.  They 
sailed  at  irregular  intervals,  according  as  they  ob 
tained  their  cargo  and  passengers.  After  the  news 
paper  announced  that  a  ship  would  sail  she  might 
wait  a  week  or  a  month  before  she  was  ready.  Her 
destination  could  not  always  be  assured.  For  ex 
ample,  she  would  sail  from  Savannah  "to  an  Eastern 
port  (as  may  be  most  convenient  to  make)."  It  took 
about  two  weeks  to  sail  from  New  York  to  Savannah ; 
from  New  York  to  Charleston,  about  ten  days;  from 
Savannah  to  Charleston,  from  three  to  five  days; 
from  Charleston  to  Wilmington,  North  Carolina,  about 
as  long;  from  Philadelphia  to  Charleston,  about  ten 
days;  from  New  York  to  Boston,  about  four  days; 
from  Norfolk  to  New  York,  not  less  than  two  days. 
The  ships  were  tolerably  well-fitted;  but,  of  course, 
a  voyage  which  included  for  the  longer  distances  the 
doubling  of  Cape  Hatteras  was  not  undertaken  for 
pleasure.  From  what  has  been  written  it  is  plain  that 
only  a  small  proportion  of  the  people  ever  went  far 
from  home,  and  their  means  of  communication  by 
mail  were  proportionally  difficult  and  expensive.  To 
send  a  single  letter  not  more  than  30  miles  cost  8 
cents;  over  30  and  not  more  than  80  miles,  10  cents; 
over  80  and  not  more  than  150  miles,  i2>£  cents;  over 
150  and  not  more  than  400  miles,  i8>£  cents;  over 

54 


COACH  AND  SLOOP 

400  miles,  25  cents.  For  a  double,  triple,  or  quadruple 
letter,  double,  triple,  or  quadruple  postage  was  charged. 
It  cost  i  cent  to  send  a  single  newspaper  100  miles,  and 
i>£  cents  above  100  miles.  The  charge  for  pamphlets 
and  magazines  was  i  cent  per  sheet  (sixteen  pages)  for 
50  miles;  and  i>£  cents  for  50  to  100  miles;  and  2 
cents  above  100  miles.  Every  one  tried  to  avoid  pay 
ing  postage  by  sending  letters  by  the  hands  of  travelers. 

A  few  boys  of  the  wealthier  classes  were  sent  away 
from  home  to  be  educated;  but  even  the  great  col 
leges  were  in  the  main  local  institutions.  Princeton 
was  the  only  one  which  had  as  many  students  from 
other  states  as  it  had  from  New  Jersey,  but  they 
were  principally  from  contiguous  states.  Some  South 
ern  boys  were  sent  to  Northern  colleges,  but  no  North 
ern  boys  were  sent  to  be  educated  at  the  South.  Thus 
the  class  of  1816  at  Yale,  which  was  typical,  had  36 
members  from  Connecticut,  out  of  a  total  of  54;  7 
from  the  contiguous  state  of  Massachusetts;  3  from 
South  Carolina;  and  i  from  Virginia. 

Now,  though  each  community  was  isolated,  the 
isolation  was  irksome  to  the  people,  and  they  were 
bending  their  attention  to  the  problem  of  how  to  over 
come  it.  Stage  lines  were  being  multiplied,  roads 
were  being  improved  and  new  ones  opened.  Canals 
and  internal  improvements  were  being  projected. 
There  was  an  epidemic  of  steamboat  construction. 
Beginning  on  the  Hudson,  the  boats  were  now  on  the 
Delaware  and  Potomac;  arrangements  were  being 
made  to  put  them  on  the  Mississippi  and  the  Ohio, 
and  to  send  them  across  the  seas  was  seriously  talked 
of.  A  great  change  in  this  respect  had  come  over  the 

55 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

spirit  of  the  people  in  the  last  twenty-five  years.  In 
1787  John  Fitch's  boat,  which  William  Thornton  had 
made  to  go  successfully,  had  plied  the  Delaware,  but 
the  interest  in  it  was  so  feeble  that  Thornton  had 
thought  it  useless  to  take  out  patents.  When  Robert 
Fulton  put  very  much  the  same  boat  on  the  Hudson 
in  1809  the  public  mind  received  it  with  enthusiasm 
and  it  was  the  mother  of  a  flock  which  soon  crowded 
the  inland  waters.  But  until  steam  should  be  applied 
to  locomotion  on  land  the  utmost  efforts  to  shorten 
distances  must  have  very  limited  results.  A  horse 
was  still  as  swift  as  a  steamboat,  and  horses  could 
not  go  long  distances  at  a  rapid  rate.  In  1814  John 
Stevens  applied  to  the  state  of  New  Jersey  for  a  char 
ter  for  a  railroad  between  New  York  and  Philadephia, 
but  it  was  not  till  fifteen  years  later  that  a  locomotive 
ran.  Travel  in  1815  was  still  in  a  primitive  state. 

But  the  individuals  in  the  isolated  communities 
were  close  to  one  another  in  their  relations,  under 
stood  one  another,  and  sympathized  with  one  another. 
As  people  who  followed  the  same  occupation  could  not 
co-operate  except  in  the  same  place,  there  was  no 
class  co-operation.  The  specialization  which  has  been 
brought  about  by  shortening  of  distances,  encour 
aging  minute  divisions  of  labor,  could  not  exist.  As 
we  have  seen,  the  people  were  nearly  all  agricultural 
ists,  and  a  farmer's  occupations,  interests,  and  knowl 
edge  must  be  diversified  when  he  lives  at  home  and 
supplies  nearly  all  his  own  needs.  The  communities, 
too,  were  so  small  that  the  members  were  in  constant 
personal  association.  If  a  man  built  a  house  he  di 
rected  the  operations  himself,  selected  the  materials 

56 


COACH  AND  SLOOP 

himself,  and  if  he  was  a  proprietor  and  did  not  actu 
ally  wield  a  hammer  or  saw,  he  himself  employed 
those  who  did  and  paid  them  with  his  own  hand. 
He  saw  the  planting  done,  if  he  did  not  himself  throw 
the  seed;  he  dealt  directly  with  those  who  bought 
the  product  of  his  land.  He  knew  his  neighbor.  Be 
nevolence  and  charity  were  personal.  The  poor,  un 
fortunate,  and  distressed  appealed  to  the  well-to-do 
of  their  neighborhood  and  received  assistance  directly. 
In  consequence  of  the  individual  intercourse  there 
was  no  class  antagonism.  In  reading  the  letters 
written  at  this  period  we  are  constantly  reminded 
of  the  great  breadth  of  interest  of  the  individuals  who 
wrote  them — going  from  public  affairs  to  the  proper 
methods  of  shoeing  horses;  from  classical  literature 
to  the  best  way  of  preparing  lumber  for  building  pur 
poses.  The  many  functions  of  a  man's  nature  were 
exercised  and  his  characteristics  had  room  to  develop. 
The  civilization  of  steam  and  electricity  has  raised 
the  general  level  of  culture,  but  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  it  has  not  lessened  the  opportunities  for  the 
highest  individual  development.  In  1815  men  were 
not  in  constant  and  almost  exclusive  contact  with 
others  of  the  same  class  as  themselves,  doing  the  same 
things,  having  the  same  interests,  and  influencing 
one  another  to  a  general  sameness;  as  one  of  Kings- 
ley's  characters  put  it,  "rubbing  off  their  angles  against 
each  other,  and  forming  their  characters,  as  you  form 
shot,  by  shaking  them  together  in  a  bag  till  they 
have  polished  each  other  into  dullest  uniformity." 

Undoubtedly  the  world  has  grown  since  1815,  but 
the  individual  has  withered. 

57 


IX 

TURBANS   AND   PANTALOONS 

ONE  morning  during  the  second  session  of  the 
First  Congress  John  Adams,  the  Vice-President, 
took  a  seat  beside  Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton  be 
fore  he  called  the  Senate  to  order,  and  began  to  ques 
tion  him  about  his  estate  in  Maryland.  He  persisted 
in  speaking  of  it  as  an  empire  and  in  treating  Carroll 
as  if  he  were  a  baron ;  and  he  seemed  to  derive  personal 
satisfaction  from  the  fact  that  he  presided  over  a 
body  which  contained  several  barons.  William  Ma- 
clay,  a  Senator  from  Pennsylvania,  one  of  the  earliest 
members  of  the  Republican  party,  sat  near  by  and 
heard  Adams's  remarks  with  disgust.  He  had  been 
disgusted  ever  since  the  Senate  had  convened,  how 
ever,  for  it  had  been  more  exercised  over  the  question 
of  the  proper  title  to  apply  to  the  President  than  by 
any  other  subject.  Adams  and  a  majority  of  the 
Senate  wanted  him  called  "his  Highness,"  or  "his 
Mightiness,"  or  by  some  other  lofty  designation,  and 
had  been  saved  from  the  blunder  only  by  the  disagree 
ment  of  the  House.  If  they  had  had  their  way  some 
thing  corresponding  to  a  court  circle  might  easily  have 
been  created.  The  resounding  title  of  the  head  of  the 
state  would  have  encouraged  the  use  of  high-sounding 
titles  by  the  lesser  officials.  These  titles  would  have 

58 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

conferred  prestige  in  private  life,  and  public  office 
would  have  been  sought  for  that  reason.  A  priv 
ileged  class  might  have  grown  up. 

Maclay  and  his  followers  were  right  in  objecting 
to  the  introduction  of  undemocratic  titles  as  danger 
ous  to  liberty.  Nevertheless,  John  Adams  and  his 
group  were  not  royalists.  If  there  were  any  such  in 
the  country  they  were  a  few  unimportant  individuals, 
who  supported  their  views  in  parlor  conversations 
and  did  not  dare  to  seek  the  public  ear.  Adams  be 
lieved  that  dignity  and  authority  should  attach  to 
office,  and  he  liked  the  trappings  of  power,  but  he 
went  no  further.  Charles  Carroll  voted  with  Maclay 
for  the  simple  title  for  the  President.  Titles  meant 
little  to  him  and  other  large  landholders  and  slave 
owners  of  the  South.  They  belonged  to  a  class  whose 
power  and  prestige  were  undisputed,  and  titles  could 
add  nothing  to  their  supremacy. 

It  must  be  remarked,  however,  that,  using  the  word 
" society"  as  meaning  the  more  cultivated  members 
of  a  community  in  their  social  relations  to  one  an 
other,  their  private  intercourse  and  recreations,  it  has 
never  been  democratic  in  its  constitution,  nor  admitted 
that  all  men  are  equal,  and  one  hundred  years  ago 
it  was  less  democratic  than  it  is  now.  Here  many  of 
the  forms  and  observances  which  had  prevailed  in  the 
days  of  the  king  and  a  court  circle  lingered  long  af 
ter  they  had  disappeared  from  public  life.  Congress 
might  refuse  to  call  the  President  his  Highness  or 
his  Mightiness,  but  the  ladies  persisted  in  calling  his 
wife  "Lady"  Washington.  As  late  as  1815  they  often 
spoke  of  Mrs.  Madison  as  "her  Majesty."  As  soon 

59 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

as  the  government  gave  the  President  a  house  to  live 
in,  nearly  everybody  called  it  "the  Palace"  or  "the 
Great  House,"  and  when  his  wife  held  a  reception 
they  called  it  a  "levee"  or  a  "drawing-room." 

In  1815  the  head  of  society  in  America  was  generally 
held  to  be  the  President's  wife,  and  the  primacy  of 
the  White  House  began  with  the  reign  of  Dolly  Madi 
son.  When  John  Adams  and  his  wife  had  moved 
into  it  in  the  first  year  of  the  century  it  was  hardly 
finished  and  they  disputed  possession  with  the  work 
men.  The  city  of  Washington  was  in  a  state  of  chaos, 
and  there  was  no  society  for  Mrs.  Adams  to  lead. 
During  Jefferson's  administration  the  house  had  a 
master,  but  no  mistress.  His  daughter,  Mrs.  Ran 
dolph,  was  with  him  most  of  the  time,  and  Mrs. 
Eppes,  another  daughter,  part  of  the  time,  but  he 
was  an  overshadowing  personage,  who  dominated  in 
every  sphere,  and  the  White  House  was  his  rather 
than  theirs. 

It  was  not  fully  furnished  till  Mrs.  Madison  and 
Benjamin  H.  Latrobe  equipped  it  in  1809,  spending 
eleven  thousand  dollars  for  the  purpose.  It  cost 
three  thousand  dollars  to  furnish  the  great  reception- 
room,  known  as  the  East  Room.  When  they  had 
finished  their  labors  the  interior  of  the  house  pre 
sented  a  pleasing  appearance  in  harmony  with  the 
perfect  taste  of  the  exterior.  When  it  was  lighted 
up  for  Mrs.  Madison's  first  reception  in  May,  1809, 
a  thousand  wax  candles  glittered  from  the  chande 
liers,  and  the  scene  was  really  beautiful.  The  house 
became  the  gathering-place  for  society  in  Washington, 
which  was  considered  to  be  the  best  the  country  af- 

60 


THE   CAPITOL    IN    1814 

Redrawn    from    an    old    print 


THE   WHITE   HOUSE   IN    1814.      SOUTH    FRONT 

From  a  contemporaneous  print 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

forded  and  was  called  ''the  first  circle  in  the  nation." 
The  mistress  of  the  White  House  followed  the  cus 
toms  of  her  time,  and  was  neither  above  them  nor  be 
low  them.  She  dressed  in  the  fashion  and  loved  beau 
tiful  clothes.  She  played  "loo"  and  other  games  of 
cards  for  money,  as  other  ladies  of  her  class  did,  until 
she  entered  the  White  House  and  felt  that  the  exam 
ple  might  be  harmful.  She  painted  her  cheeks,  which 
was  not  considered  to  be  a  crime.  She  took  snuff, 
which  was  a  common  practise  among  women  as  well 
as  men.  When  she  got  old  she  remained  the  same 
age  for  several  years  at  a  time. 

To  show  what  clothes  a  fine  lady  wore,  a  descrip 
tion  of  her  costume  on  the  day  her  husband  was  in 
augurated  may  be  ventured.  At  the  reception  after 
the  ceremonies  she  "was  drest  in  a  plain  cambrick 
dress  with  a  very  long  train,  plain  round  the  neck 
without  any  handkerchief,  and  a  beautiful  bonnet 
of  purple  velvet,  and  white  satin  with  white  plumes." 
In  the  evening  at  the  inauguration  ball  she  had  on 
"a  pale  buff-coloured  velvet,  made  plain,  with  a  very 
long  train,  but  not  the  least  trimming — a  beautiful 
pearl  necklace,  earrings,  and  bracelet — her  head-dress 
was  a  turban  of  the  same." 

A  few  years  later,  in  1811,  a  visitor  to  the  White 
House  said,  "Her  Majesty's  appearance  was  truly 
regal,  dressed  in  a  robe  of  plain  satin,  trimmed  elab 
orately  with  ermine,  a  white  velvet  and  satin  turban, 
with  nodding  ostrich  plumes  and  a  crescent  in  front, 
gold  chain  and  clasps  around  the  waist  and  wrists." 
To  pursue  the  subject  a  little  further,  a  young  lady 
who  went  to  the  peace  ball  given  in  Boston  in 

61 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

1 

1815  in  honor  of  the  Treaty  of  Ghent  must  be 
quoted : 

"I  wore,"  she  says,  "a  sheer  dotted  muslin  skirt 
trimmed  with  three  rows  of  plaited  white  satin  an 
inch  wide.  The  bodice  of  white  satin  was  also  trimmed 
with  the  same  ribbon.  I  wore  white  lace  round  the 
neck,  a  bouquet,  gold  ornaments,  chain,  etc.  My 
hair  was  arranged  in  braids,  bandeau,  and  curls." 

The  admiration  for  oriental  things  was  a  dom 
inant  note  and  showed  itself  in  the  ugly  turbans 
which  Mrs.  Madison  and  other  ladies  wore,  but  deli 
cate  Cashmere  shawls,  graceful  tunics  and  mantles, 
were  also  the  fashion.  Some  of  the  turbans  were 
made  of  spangled  muslin  and  others  of  bright-colored 
cloth,  and  from  the  center  of  a  few  glittered  a  precious 
stone.  There  was  a  passion  for  gems  and  jewelry. 
Women  twined  long  gold  chains  about  their  necks 
four  or  five  times.  They  wore  bracelets,  armlets, 
and  earrings.  Instead  of  the  turban  some  wore  droop 
ing  ostrich  plumes  in  their  hair,  or  bound  it  with 
ribbons  or  a  narrow  band  of  gold.  It  was  the  fashion 
to  gather  it  at  the  back  in  a  knot,  as  it  appears  in 
Greek  statues,  and  this  style  was  known  as  "turning 
up  the  hind  hair  close."  In  front  it  was  often  worn 
in  curls  or  ringlets,  and  a  few  had  it  cut  and  curled 
tightly  over  the  whole  head.  Wigs  were  coming  into 
fashion  for  women,  having  passed  out  for  men.  A 
pleasing  adaptation  of  the  Greek  costumes  was  af 
fected.  The  gowns  were  cut  low  in  the  neck  and  a 
muslin  ruff  rose  behind  the  head,  but  they  hung  in 
graceful,  natural  folds.  Tight  lacing  was  not  in 
vogue,  because  the  "round  gown,"  as  it  was  called, 

62 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

was  gathered  a  short  distance  below  the  shoulders 
and  did  not  show  the  lines  of  the  waist.  The  gloves 
came  up  to  the  elbows,  and  the  kid  or  silk  slippers 
barely  covered  the  toes  and  had  no  heels.  In  England 
at  this  time,  when  a  fine  lady  went  to  court  she  wore 
an  enormous  dress  puffed  out  with  a  thousand  frills 
and  flounces,  but  no  especial  costume  was  prescribed 
for  the  White  House.  The  skirts  of  the  older  women 
trailed  on  the  ground,  but  long  trains,  as  we  saw  them 
at  a  later  day,  were  not  worn.  The  skirts  of  the  girls 
barely  reached  to  their  ankles. 

The  costume  for  men  was  in  a  transition  stage,  and 
it  was  not  until  many  years  later  that  the  fashion 
of  a  special  uniform  suit  for  evening  wear  came  in. 
Pantaloons  had  been  affected  by  the  radicals  of  Paris 
during  the  French  Revolution  and  had  found  their 
way  to  America,  but  here  they  never  rose  to  political 
importance.  By  1815  they  had  come  into  general 
use  with  the  younger  men,  but  the  older  ones  adhered 
to  breeches  and  long  stockings.  There  was,  there 
fore,  great  variety  in  the  costumes  of  a  gathering  of 
men.  Some  wore  square-skirted  coats,  and  others 
a  newer  style  of  coat  made  of  blue  or  green  cloth 
with  large  gilt  or  pearl  buttons,  a  high  rolling  collar, 
and  long  narrow  tails  reaching  down  to  the  calves. 
Beau  Brummel  had  already  introduced  starch  into 
the  neckcloths  of  Europe,  and  the  fashion  had  reached 
America.  Shirt-collars  were  prodigiously  high  and 
reached  to  a  man's  ears.  Some  wore  "pudding  cra 
vats"  designed  to  make  the  chest  look  deep,  but 
stocks  were  coming  into  use.  A  few  old  men  still 
powdered  their  hair,  but  others  parted  it  on  the 

63 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

side  and  wore  it  cut  long.  A  few  fops  had  it 
curled. 

There  was  general  interest  in  the  social  life  and 
everything  else  pertaining  to  the  city  of  Washington. 
It  had  been  deliberately  planned  and  artificially  made, 
instead  of  coming  into  existence  naturally  from  the 
needs  of  the  surrounding  country  or  as  a  port  for 
shipping.  It  was  the  common  property  of  all  the  na 
tion,  and  everybody  had  an  opinion  about  it.  It  de 
served  little  praise  and  received  none.  Foreigners 
and  Americans  made  it  a  butt  for  their  wit,  and  it 
is  doubtful  if  any  other  city  in  the  world  was  ever 
so  peppered  with  epigrams. 

Here  are  some  of  the  criticisms  taken  at  random 
from  an  inexhaustible  supply.  One  of  the  early  dog 
gerel  rhymes  said  that  it  was  a  place 

Where  the  houses  and  kitchens  are  yet  to  be  framed, 
The  trees  to  be  felled,  and  the  streets  to  be  named. 

In  1806  the  poet,  Tom  Moore,  called  it 

That  fam'd  metropolis  where  fancy  sees 
Squares  in  morasses,  obelisques  in  trees. 

A  few  years  later  the  Abbe  Carrea  da  Serra,  Por 
tuguese  minister,  whom  President  Madison  called 
''the  most  enlightened  and  esteemed  foreigner  among 
us,"  said  it  was  "the  city  of  magnificent  distances." 

It  was  a  sorry  place  to  look  at.  The  broad  streets 
were  unpaved  and  most  of  the  houses  were  cheap 
and  mean.  The  few  public  buildings  were  classic 
in  design,  but  they  were  framed  in  a  ragged  waste. 
The  parks  existed  only  in  the  plan.  Yet  there  was 

64 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

an  agreeable  social  life  in  the  city,  and  a  compact 
society  was  built  up  from  the  various  elements.  The 
high  Federal  officials  were  the  dominant  class.  It 
is  true  that  they  embraced  many  degrees  of  culture 
and  lack  of  culture,  especially  among  the  Senators 
and  representatives.  There  is  an  account  of  a  Wes 
tern  Senator  who  saw  a  pianoforte  for  the  first 
time  and  was  as  curious  concerning  it  as  an  Indian 
would  have  been,  but  other  Senators  powdered  their 
hair,  drank  old  Madeira,  and  quoted  Horace.  They 
were  particular  about  being  called  upon,  and  had 
quarrels  over  precedence.  There  was  a  group  of 
army  and  navy  officers  always  in  the  city,  and  they 
were  generally  well-educated  and  entertaining  com 
panions.  The  stationary  inhabitants  comprised  a  few 
high  officials,  several  hundred  government  clerks, 
who  occupied  a  more  important  place  in  the  city's 
life  then  than  government  clerks  do  now,  a  small 
diplomatic  corps  of  not  more  than  a  dozen  people, 
and  a  few  wealthy  landholders  and  resident  families, 
chiefly  in  Georgetown,  who  had  been  on  the  scene 
when  the  government  arrived  and  acted  in  some  sort 
as  hosts. 

The  society  was  held  together  by  two  generally  ac 
cepted  principles.  One  was  that  a  man  of  high  rank 
in  the  government  service  was  entitled  to  privileges 
and  prestige  in  private  life,  and  the  other  was  that  a 
member  of  a  family  which  had  enjoyed  social  privi 
leges  for  several  generations  had  a  vested  right  to 
their  continuance.  Every  one  was  proud  of  the  new 
country  and  esteemed  it  a  privilege  to  associate  with 
the  officials  who  governed  it.  To  attain  public  office 
5  65 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

was  then  almost  the  only  goal  of  an  ambitious  man. 
Wealth  was  powerful,  as  it  has  always  been,  and  was 
sought  after,  but  it  was  not  by  itself  all-powerful,  and 
to  pursue  it  was  not  regarded  as  the  sole  business  of 
life.  Many  people  were  getting  rich,  it  is  true,  but 
the  time  of  the  mad  race  for  money  and  the  accumu 
lation  of  vast  fortunes  had  not  arrived,  being  reserved 
for  a  later  generation,  when  machinery,  steam,  quick 
locomotion,  and  instantaneous  communication  of  in 
telligence  produced  combinations  of  interests  and  co 
operation  of  effort,  opened  limitless  markets,  resulted 
in  greatly  increased  production  and  fabulous  profits. 
The  industries  in  the  isolated  communities  of  1815 
were  strictly  circumscribed  in  extent  and  the  profits 
were  not  large. 

The  respect  which  generally  maintained  for  mem 
bers  of  old  families  was  a  survival  of  the  colonial 
times,  the  lingering  of  a  habit  which  came  from  the 
days  of  privileged  classes.  It  was  supported  by  the 
agricultural  foundation  of  society.  Where  nearly  all 
men  were  farmers,  one  who  had  a  large  farm  was  a 
man  of  consequence.  The  stability  of  country  life 
produced  family  cohesion  and  families  were  then  a 
power  in  every  direction.  The  history  of  New  York, 
for  instance,  up  to  this  time  i$  concerned  largely 
with  the  history  of  the  relations  between  the  Living 
ston  and  Clinton  families;  and  in  several  Southern 
states  a  few  rich  families  monopolized  the  public 
offices. 

So  an  agreeable  and  well-selected  society  existed 
in  Washington.  It  was  a  generation  later,  when  the 
new  West — where  men  had  grown  up  unoppressed  by 

66 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

visible  social  restraints — came  into  control,  that  the 
doctrine  of  political  equality  was  held  to  carry  with 
it  social  equality  and  the  removal  of  the  barriers  which 
had  separated  groups  of  people  in  private  life.  To 
be  specific,  the  fabric  of  Washington  society  was  de 
stroyed  when  Andrew  Jackson  became  President. 

The  days  were  not  crowded  in  1815,  and  leisure 
fostered  social  intercourse.  Morning  calls  were  paid, 
and  the  callers  stayed  long  enough  for  rational  con 
versation.  When  they  gathered  together  their  num 
ber  was  small  enough  to  permit  of  general  acquaint 
anceship.  Even  at  the  inauguration  ball  there  were 
only  four  hundred  people  present.  In  the  large  cities 
there  were  occasionally  as  many  at  a  public  ball; 
but  a  private  entertainment  was  considered  to  be  a 
very  large  one  if  there  were  two  hundred  guests. 

Men  of  standing  in  the  community  did  not  esteem 
the  affairs  of  society  to  be  unworthy  of  their  atten 
tion.  In  1802  Capt.  Thomas  Tingey,  an  officer  of 
high  standing  in  the  navy;  John  Peter  Van  Ness, 
lately  a  representative  in  Congress ;  Samuel  Harrison 
Smith,  founder  of  the  National  Intelligencer ;  Dr. 
William  Thornton,  the  first  superintendent  of  the 
Patent  Office  and  the  designer  of  the  Capitol,  and 
several  others  of  similar  rank — organized  the  Washing 
ton  Dancing  Assembly,  which  continued  in  existence 
for  many  years  and  gave  dancing-parties  at  short 
intervals  during  the  winter  season.  There  were  simi 
lar  organizations,  managed  by  men  of  prominence,  in 
all  the  large  cities.  The  amusements  of  society  were 
not  left  to  the  exclusive  control  of  idle  and  frivolous 
people. 

67 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

When  Philadelphia  ceased  to  be  the  capital  some 
of  the  spirit  which  had  made  it  the  gayest  and  most 
luxurious  city  on  the  continent  departed  from  it  and 
the  severity  of  the  old  Quaker  life  reasserted  itself, 
but  it  was  still  an  agreeable  place  to  live  in.  Sub 
scription  dances  or  assemblies  were  begun  there  in 
1749  by  an  association  which,  omitting  the  period 
of  the  Revolutionary  War,  has  been  giving  them  ever 
since,  and  is  thus  the  oldest  dancing  organization  in 
the  United  States. 

There  were  a  number  of  foreign  dancing-masters 
in  Philadelphia,  as  there  were  in  other  cities.  They 
taught  the  cotillion,  a  lively  French  dance,  executed 
by  any  number  of  couples  performing  evolutions  or 
figures,  as  in  the  modern  german,  the  menuet  de  la 
cour,  the  waltz, — which  was  new  and  was  received 
with  some  doubts  of  its  propriety — Highland  reels, 
fancy  jigs,  which  were  not  often  seen  in  polite  circles 
of  society,  and  American  country  dances  which  were 
like  our  Virginia  reel. 

The  Philadelphia  assemblies  began  promptly  at 
six  o'clock  and  stopped  at  midnight.  They  were 
attended  by  the  older  people  as  well  as  the  young  men 
and  girls,  card-tables  being  always  provided  for  those 
who  did  not  care  to  dance.  The  difficulty  of  finding 
a  suitable  place  for  the  assemblies  was  solved  at  this 
time  by  making  use  of  the  Mansion  Hotel  on  Third 
Street. 

It  was  some  years  before  there  was  a  hotel  in  Phila 
delphia  in  a  building  constructed  for  the  purpose, 
the  Mansion  Hotel  having  been  adapted  from  the 
large  town  house  of  the  Binghams.  The  meals  which 

68 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

were  served  were  typical  of  the  best  hotels.  For 
breakfast  there  were  tea  and  coffee,  eggs,  cold  ham 
and  beef,  hot  fish,  sausage,  beefsteak,  broiled  fowls, 
fried  and  stewed  oysters,  and  preserved  fruit.  The 
supper  was  essentially  the  same  as  the  breakfast,  but 
for  the  dinner  roasts  of  beef  or  turkey  or  mutton, 
game,  vegetables,  puddings  and  pies,  and  wine  and 
liquors  were  added. 

The  greatest  hotel  in  the  country  was  the  new  City 
Hotel  in  New  York,  which  had  recently  been  erected 
on  Broadway  between  Thames  and  Liberty  streets. 
It  was  five  stories  high,  contained  seventy-eight  rooms, 
and  was  regarded  as  a  marvel  of  size  and  luxury. 
There  was  a  large  assembly-room  where  dancing- 
parties  were  held. 

The  society  of  New  York  was  changing  and  already 
the  commercial  life  of  the  city  was  rising  to  the  top. 
The  population  was  about  one  hundred  thousand 
people.  It  had  passed  Philadelphia  and  was  increas 
ing  in  size  at  a  tremendous  rate.  Wall  Street  was  re 
garded  as  the  typical  street.  The  Stranger's  Guide- 
Book  for  1817  said: 

In  Wall  Street,  which  commences  at  Broadway,  crosses  Pearl 
Street,  and  descends  to  the  river,  are  situated  the  Banking-houses, 
Custom-houses,  Insurance  offices,  Tontine  Coffee-house,  the 
offices  of  Exchange  Brokers,  and  most  other  public  mercantile 
officers.  This  is  a  very  handsome,  airy  street.  Towards  the  bot 
tom,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Pearl  Street,  and  in  front  of  the 
Coffee-house,  the  public  sales  by  auction  are  conducted,  which 
renders  this  quarter  extremely  busy,  and  gives  a  very  favorable 
and  correct  idea  of  the  extensive  trade  and  commerce  of  New  York. 

Like  Boston,  New  York  had  suffered  from  the  em 
bargo,  but  it  recovered  with  startling  rapidity,  and 

69 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

business  went  forward  so  furiously  that  in  a  few  years 
there  was  a  reaction  and  a  temporary  business  col 
lapse.  Notwithstanding  the  obvious  commercial 
destiny  of  the  city,  the  society  was  still  aristocratic. 
Great  families,  such  as  the  Livingstons,  Clintons, 
Van  Rensselaers,  Schuylers,  and  Morrises,  domi 
nated  politically  and  socially  and  even  industrially. 
The  social  life  was  gay.  A  few  Dutch  customs — for 
instance,  general  visiting  on  New-year's  day — pre 
vailed  and  spread  to  other  cities.  Many  private  balls 
were  given.  The  favorite  dining-place  for  the  men 
was  the  Tontine  Coffee-house;  the  lounging-place  for 
people  of  fashion  in  the  warmer  seasons  was  the  beau 
tiful  Battery  overlooking  the  Bay.  There  were  as 
yet  no  men's  social  clubs,  but  a  few  popular  shops, 
to  a  certain  extent,  took  their  place.  A  man  could 
stroll  into  one  of  these,  meet  his  friends,  and  linger 
for  hours  at  a  time.  In  Boston  there  were  several 
shops  which  were  as  well  known  as  meeting-places 
as  clubs  are  now. 

In  spite  of  the  presence  of  a  Puritanical  element 
there  was  almost  as  much  entertaining  in  Boston  as 
in  New  York.  It  had  suffered  severely  during  the 
war,  as  much  of  its  wealth  was  in  shipping,  and  it 
received  the  news  of  peace  with  wild  rejoicing.  There 
was  a  long  emblematical  procession,  and  a  great  ora 
torio  was  sung  in  the  concert -hall.  On  the  evening 
of  February  24th  there  was  a  peace  ball  which  every 
body,  including  the  gentry,  attended.  In  spite  of  the 
general  evenness  of  fortune  among  the  people  of  New 
England,  and  the  consequent  democratic  nature  of 
the  social  life  in  Boston  and  other  large  towns,  there 

70 


CITY    HOTEL,    BROADWAY,    NEW    YORK,    l8l2 


TURBANS  AND  PANTALOONS 

was  a  perfectly  clear  dividing-line  between  the  gentry 
and  the  common  people. 

The  chief  gathering-places  for  the  society  of  the 
South  were  Baltimore  and  Annapolis  for  Maryland, 
Richmond  and  Norfolk  for  Virginia,  Raleigh  and  Wil 
mington  for  North  Carolina,  Charleston  for  South 
Carolina,  and  Savannah  for  Georgia.  New  Orleans 
was  a  city  by  itself,  deriving  its  prosperity  from  com 
merce  and  from  the  vicinity.  It  was  as  much  French 
in  its  characteristics  as  if  it  had  been  in  France. 

One  Southern  city  in  particular  stands  out  as  hav 
ing  the  characteristics  of  the  others  in  an  exaggerated 
degree.  Charleston  was  then  among  the  first  five 
cities  in  the  country  in  population,  among  the  first 
three  in  the  importance  of  its  commerce,  and  with 
out  a  rival  in  the  lavishness  of  its  hospitality  and  the 
luxurious  life  of  the  members  of  its  ruling  circle.  Few 
families  in  this  circle  had  less  than  twenty  household 
servants,  all  had  coaches  and  horses,  and  their  ser 
vants  wore  family  liveries.  It  is  true  that  the  ser 
vants  played  as  much  as  they  worked,  that  the 
coaches  were  not  always  in  repair,  and  that  the  liv 
eries  were  often  shabby,  but  the  masters  lived  like 
a  landed  nobility,  were  treated  as  a  nobility,  and  often 
spoke  of  themselves  as  a  nobility.  Those  who  had 
their  plantations  near  the  coast  were  generally  called 
the  "low-country  nobility."  Writing  some  years  la-' 
ter,  John  H.  Hammond,  Senator  from  South  Caro 
lina,  said  he  wished  his  sons  to  be  "South  Carolina 
country  gentlemen,  the  nearest  to  noblemen  of  any 
class  in  America."  In  colonial  days  some  of  the  gentry 
had  been  in  commerce,  but  as  the  civilization  de- 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

veloped  more  and  more  upon  a  foundation  of  slavery 
all  trade  came  to  be  looked  down  upon  as  an  occupa 
tion  unworthy  of  gentlemen.  It  fell  almost  exclu 
sively  into  the  hands  of  foreigners,  while  the  Caro 
linians  planted  and  went  into  the  learned  professions 
and  public  life.  It  was  the  custom  for  each  of  the 
wealthy  families  in  Charleston  to  give  a  large  ball 
every  year.  In  February  the  races  took  place,  when 
the  Jockey  Club  ball  was  held,  which  was  the  most 
important  social  event  of  the  year.  The  city  was  most 
famous,  however,  for  the  dinner  parties  given.  There 
was  a  good  market,  so  far  as  fish  and  game  were  con 
cerned  ;  at  any  rate,  there  was  profusion ;  and  gentle 
men  spent  a  great  deal  of  money  on  their  wines  in 
those  days.  There  was  a  circle  of  wits,  of  raconteurs, 
of  cultivated  conversationalists  who  gave  attention 
to  dinner-table  accomplishments,  who  repeated  one 
another's  good  jokes  and  epigrams,  who  prepared 
themselves  for  their  contests  of  wit,  and  took  pride  in 
victory. 

There  were  similar  groups  in  other  cities.  The 
hours  of  leisure,  which  compelled  social  intercourse; 
the  diversification  of  occupations  and  of  acquaint 
ances  which  gave  a  wide  range  to  thoughts  and  in 
terests;  the  continued  familiarity  with  the  classics 
which  educated  men  were  expected  to  maintain — all 
combined  to  produce  good  conversation  and  to  cause 
it  to  be  cultivated.  The  table  talk  was  better  than 
it  can  be  in  an  age  of  hurry  and  of  incessant  employ 
ment  at  one  thing.  No  one  thought  in  those  days  of 
describing  the  qualities  of  a  man  without  speaking 
of  his  colloquial  parts. 


3  § 


WOMEN 

A  RECENT  commentator  on  American  life  has 
observed  that  our  political  history  is  notably 
free  from  the  names  of  women;  and  he  is  correct. 
The  historian  of  the  United  States  cannot  begin  his 
work  with  an  account  of  a  wholesale  flirtation,  as 
Herodotus,  the  father  of  history,  began  his;  nor  is  he 
called  upon  to  discuss  the  wholesale  divorces  of  a 
monarch  as  a  part  of  the  history  of  a  great  crisis,  as 
an  English  historian  must.  It  is  true  that  a  queen 
as  well  as  a  king  gave  encouragement  to  Christopher 
Columbus  and  sent  him  on  the  voyage  which  resulted 
in  the  discovery  of  America,  and  that  it  was  under 
another  queen,  Elizabeth,  that  the  first  English  set 
tlements  were  made,  but  when  we  come  to  America 
itself  we  find  ourselves  in  a  land  where  men  have 
been  thus  far  in  undisputed  political  possession.  It 
is  necessary  for  our  purpose  to  point  out  only  one 
reason  why  this  is  so.  It  is  because  there  has  never 
been  a  permanent  governing  class  in  this  country, 
with  a  permanent  society  of  officials  and  their  fam 
ilies,  in  which,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  womeii 
would  be  supreme.  Whenever  the  same  officials  have 
been  in  power  for  a  long  time,  however,  a  society  of 
their  own  has  begun,  and  there  have  been  signs  of 

73 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

the  influence  of  women  in  political  affairs.  Such  a 
society  was  forming  in  1815,  when  the  same  party 
had  been  in  control  of  the  national  government  for 
fifteen  years.  It  grew  in  force  during  Monroe's  term 
of  eight  years,  which  was  a  continuance  of  Madison's ; 
and  when  three  members  of  his  Cabinet,  Adams,  Cal- 
houn,  and  Crawford,  were  candidates  to  succeed  him, 
each  had  a  coterie  of  women  followers  in  Washington, 
who  exerted  themselves  to  further  the  interests  of 
their  favorite.  When  Andrew  Jackson,  an  outsider, 
became  President,  Washington  society  was  strong 
enough  to  try  a  fall  with  him.  He  offended  it  by 
taking  into  his  Cabinet  the  husband  of  a  woman  whom 
it  would  not  recognize,  and  it  compelled  him  to  send 
the  obnoxious  couple  beyond  the  seas  and  reorganize 
his  administration.  But  soon  the  personnel  of  Wash 
ington  society  was  changed,  the  circle  was  broken 
into  pieces,  its  power  was  gone,  and  women's  influ 
ence  disappeared  from  national  political  life.  That 
influence  had  been  exerted  indirectly,  however,  and 
a  woman  of  polite  breeding  would  have  resented  a 
charge  that  she  meddled  in  public  affairs.  What  she 
thought  on  the  subject  is  illustrated  by  the  remark 
of  Mrs.  Samuel  Harrison  Smith,  a  woman  of  unusual 
intelligence,  to  a  Federalist  whom  she  met  a  few  hours 
after  she  had  fled  from  Washington  when  the  British 
invaded  the  city  in  1814.  He  said  the  defeat  of  the 
Americans  was  an  argument  for  a  standing  army,  and 
Mrs.  Smith  replied  that  she  had  always  understood 
that  a  standing  army  was  an  instrument  of  despot 
ism;  but,  she  added,  "I  am  not  competent  to  discuss 
such  questions,  sir."  Mrs.  Madison  herself  furnishes 

74 


WOMEN 

another  illustration.  She  enjoyed  the  friendship  of 
more  public  men  than  any  other  woman  of  her  day, 
but  there  is  no  record  anywhere  of  her  views  on  pub 
lic  questions,  or  that  she  ever  influenced  the  poli 
tical  views  or  actions  of  her  husband,  who  was  wholly 
devoted  to  her.  We  can,  in  fact,  eliminate  consider 
ation  of  women  in  any  other  than  their  private  rela 
tions  when  we  consider  the  American  women  of  a 
hundred  years  ago.  "A  female  politician,"  said  The 
Female  Friend,  a  little  book  published  in  Baltimore 
in  1809  under  the  patronage  of  citizens  of  that  city, 
Annapolis,  Alexandria,  Georgetown,  and  Washington 
— "a  female  politician  is  only  less  disgusting  than  a 
female  infidel — but  a  female  patriot  is  what  Hannah 
More  was  and  what  every  American  woman  should 
study  to  be." 

So  the  women  were  domestic,  and  the  home  was  the 
scene  of  their  activity.  The  object  of  their  education 
was  to  attract  men,  gain  husbands,  have  homes,  and 
manage  families.  Their  teaching  was  entirely  dif 
ferent  from  that  of  men.  All  boys  who  went  beyond 
the  merest  rudiments  must  learn  Latin  and  mathe 
matics,  but  the  girls  learned  neither,  nor  Greek,  nor 
the  sciences,  except  some  geography,  astronomy,  and 
physics — or  natural  philosophy,  as  they  called  it. 
To  give  a  girl  the  same  course  of  study  as  a  boy  be 
yond  the  first  reader  would  have  been  regarded  as 
an  absurdity.  Addison's  description,  in  the  Spec 
tator,  of  the  accomplishments  of  an  Englishwoman  of 
high  breeding  in  1712,  would  have  answered  with  some 
modifications  for  the  daughter  of  a  well-to-do  family 
of  America  in  1815. 

75 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

She  sings,  dances,  plays  on  the  lute  and  harpsichord,  paints 
prettily,  is  a  perfect  mistress  of  the  French  tongue,  and  has 
made  a  considerable  progress  in  Italian.  She  is,  besides,  excel 
lently  skilled  in  all  domestic  sciences,  as  preserving,  pickling, 
pastry,  making  wines  of  fruits  of  our  own  growth,  embroidering, 
and  needlework  of  every  kind. 

The  domestic  sciences  all  of  them  were  taught, 
whether  they  were  rich  or  poor.  When  President 
Madison  was  inaugurated  in  1809  he  wore  a  suit  of 
dark  -  brown  cloth  made  of  wool  which  had  been 
carded,  spun,  and  woven  by  Elizabeth  Stevens  Liv 
ingston,  the  daughter  of  Robert  R.  Livingston,  of 
Clermont,  and  her  accomplishments  were  not  re 
garded  as  exceptional  for  a  woman  of  her  class. 

All  women  were  expected  to  learn  to  nurse  the 
sick.  Professional  nurses  were  not  readily  obtain 
able  and  were  ignorant  and  untrained,  so  it  was  the 
custom  of  women  to  nurse  not  only  in  their  own  fam 
ilies  but  in  the  families  of  their  neighbors  and  friends. 
When  the  qualities  of  a  woman  were  enumerated  it 
was  usual  to  speak  of  her  skill  and  tenderness  as  a 
nurse. 

Elementary  as  it  was,  the  book  education  of  women 
was  far  better  than  it  had  been  in  earlier  days  and 
was  more  generally  diffused  among  them.  Women 
wrote  well,  though  their  grandmothers  had  not  been 
able  to  write  at  all.  They  read  some  books  besides 
the  Bible,  and  spoke  better  grammar.  They  wrote 
very  good  letters,  although  they  were  taught  a  stilted 
and  unnatural  style.  Their  choice  of  appropriate 
words  seemed  to  be  instinctive,  their  sentences  were 
well  constructed,  and  their  meaning  was  clear. 

76 


WOMEN 

The  system  of  education  fulfilled  its  object.  Ac 
cording  to  report,  the  girls  of  North  Carolina  married 
at  such  an  early  age  that  grandmothers  of  twenty- 
seven  years  of  age  were  often  met  with,  but,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  early  marrriages  were  usual  in  all  the 
states.  Even  among  the  higher  classes  girls  often 
married  when  they  were  thirteen.  This  was  a  new 
country  and  there  were  more  men  than  women,  so 
there  were  few  old  maids  It  was  a  farmer's  country, 
productive  land  was  plentiful,  and  it  was  easy  to 
support  a  family,  so  from  the  early  marriages  came 
large  numbers  of  children,  often  a  dozen  or  more  from 
one  marriage.  Widows  married  again  if  they  were 
young;  widowers  married  again  whether  they  were 
young  or  old.  It  was  the  land  of  marriage. 

To  describe  more  particularly  the  position  which 
"females,"  as  the  contemporaneous  authors  usually 
called  women,  occupied,  it  is  necessary  to  reconstruct 
an  archaic  condition  of  society.  Rousseau,  writing 
his  Emilie  some  years  earlier,  showed  what  he  thought 
was  the  object  of  their  education  and  training,  and 
Americans  generally  were  in  accord  with  his  view. 

"The  education  of  women,"  he  said,  "should  be 
always  relative  to  the  men.  To  please,  to  be  useful 
to  us,  to  make  us  love  and  esteem  them,  to  educate 
us  when  young  and  to  take  care  of  us  when  grown  up, 
to  advise,  to  console  us,  to  render  our  lives  easy  and 
agreeable;  these  are  the  duties  of  women  at  all  times." 

Americans  were  a  religious  people,  and  the  women, 
especially,  were  orthodox.  They  put  human  conduct 
to  the  touchstone  of  the  rules  laid  down  in  the  New 
Testament.  They  accepted  the  gospel  according  to 

77 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

St.  Paul  without  protest,  even  when  he  told  them 
that  they  must  learn  in  silence,  with  all  subjection; 
that  the  head  of  every  woman  is  the  man ;  that  woman 
is  the  glory  of  the  man ;  that  the  man  was  not  created 
for  the  woman,  but  the  woman  for  the  man;  that  she 
must  be  a  keeper  at  home,  good  and  obedient  to  her 
husband ;  that  she  must  submit  herself  to  her  husband 
as  to  the  Lord. 

The  books  which  were  written  for  the  guidance  of 
young  women  and  accepted  by  them  quoted  this  pas 
sage  from  Milton: 

To  whom  thus  Eve  with  perfect  beauty  adorn'd: 
"My  Author  and  Disposer,  what  thou  bidst 
Unargued  I  obey;  so  God  ordains; 
God  is  thy  law,  thou  mine:  to  know  no  more 
Is  woman's  happiest  knowledge  and  her  praise." 

A  standard  author  with  them  was  Hannah  More. 
She  was  quoted,  remembered,  emulated,  and  shame 
lessly  imitated.  Her  philosophy  was  that  of  the  men 
of  her  time.  One  of  her  ablest  essays  was  on  St.  Paul ; 
but,  while  she  defended  him  from  the  charge  that  he 
opposed  marriage,  she  did  not  defend  his  views  on 
woman's  subordination,  because  no  one  attacked  them. 

The  books  addressed  to  the  women  tell  us  what 
was  expected  of  them.  They  were  advised  to  culti 
vate  the  art  of  conversation  so  as  to  be  pleasing. 
When  a  woman  married  she  should  resign  all  claims 
to  general  attention  and  concentrate  herself  upon  her 
husband  and  her  home.  One  author  said,  she  must 
understand  in  the  beginning  "that  there  is  an  in 
equality  in  the  sexes,  and  that  for  the  economy  of 
the  world  the  men,  who  were  to  be  the  guardians  and 

78  • 


WOMEN 

lawgivers,  had  not  only  the  greater  share  of  bodily 
strength  bestowed  on  them,  but  those  also  of  reason 
and  resolution."  She  was  told  that  unchastity  was 
regarded  as  ''superlatively  criminal  in  women,"  but 
in  men  was  "viewed  in  a  far  less  disadvantageous 
light."  Therefore,  the  woman  who  had  an  unfaith 
ful  husband  should  not  expostulate  with  him,  for  that 
would  drive  him  away,  but  should  feign  ignorance  of 
his  misconduct  and  by  superior  agreeableness  and  at 
tractions  win  him  back.  She  should  never  blazon 
forth  her  wrongs,  for  she  would  not  have  the  public 
on  her  side.  Separation  from  her  husband  should 
be  her  last  resort.  It  was  a  terrible  experiment,  and 
made  the  wife  responsible  for  all  the  vices  the  hus 
band  might  fall  into  after  separation.  The  great 
duty  of  woman  was  to  contribute  daily  and  hourly  to 
the  comfort  of  husband,  parents,  brothers  and  sisters, 
and  other  relations  and  friends,  to  form  and  improve 
the  manners  and  dispositions  of  men  by  her  society 
and  example;  to  care  for  children  and  mold  their 
minds.  She  was  prescribed  strong  doses  in  reading, 
most  of  the  books  dealing  with  religion;  but  she 
could  read  The  Rambler,  The  Idler,  and  The  Spec 
tator.  Shakespeare  was  too  coarse,  but  selections 
from  his  works  were  permitted.  Byron  must  be 
avoided;  but  Young's  Night  Thoughts,  Thomson's 
Seasons,  Milton,  Cowper,  and  Goldsmith  were  recom 
mended.  Moral  essays,  such  as  Mrs.  Chapone's  let 
ters  on  the  Government  of  the  Temper,  Knox's  essays, 
and,  of  course,  everything  of  the  incomparable  Hannah 
More,  were  considered  the  best  things  for  her;  but 
she  was  encouraged  to  read  American  history — Hutch- 

79 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

inson's  History  of  Massachusetts,  Ramsay's  History  of 
the  Revolution,  and  the  Proceedings  of  the  Massachu 
setts  Historical  Society  being  specified  as  suitable 
works.  Of  American  biography  there  were  the  lives 
of  Franklin  and  Washington.  She  was  warned  against 
novels,  but  might  indulge  herself  with  The  Vicar  of 
Wakefield,  Don  Quixote,  and  a  few  others.  Life  was 
a  serious  affair,  and  preparation  for  eternity  should 
be  made  by  reading  serious,  contemplative  books, 
such  as  Dodd's  Reflections  on  Death  and  his  Thoughts 
in  Prison,  Taylor's  Holy  Living  and  Dying,  and  Little 
ton's  Dialogues  of  the  Dead.  I  am  not  writing  a 
humorous  parody  on  the  education  of  a  young  lady, 
but  am  faithfully  transcribing  the  titles  of  the  books 
which  those  who  directed  her  reading  placed  in  her 
hands.  She  accepted  these  books  submissively;  nay, 
she  even  accepted  books  in  which  Dean  Swift's  letter 
to  a  very  young  lady  on  her  marriage  was  printed, 
paraphrased,  or  plagiarized.  The  Dean  informed  the 
"very  young  lady":  "The  grand  affair  of  your  life 
will  be  to  gain  and  preserve  the  friendship  and  esteem 
of  your  husband,"  and  admonished  her  that  love  is 
"that  ridiculous  passion  which  has  no  being  but  in 
play-books  and  romances."  Of  course,  the  latter  re 
mark  she  did  not  believe,  but  it  is  surprising  that  she 
consented  to  listen  to  insults  like  these:  "As  little 
respect  as  I  have  for  the  generality  of  your  sex,"  etc., 
and  concerning  their  fondness  for  fine  clothes: 

So  your  sex  employs  more  thought,  memory,  and  application 
to  be  fools,  than  would  serve  to  make  them  wise  and  useful.  When 
I  reflect  on  this,  I  cannot  conceive  you  to  be  human  creatures, 
but  a  sort  of  species  hardly  a  degree  above  a  monkey;  which  has 

80 


WOMEN 

more  diverting  tricks  than  any  of  you;  is  an  animal  less  mis 
chievous  and  expensive;  might  in  time  be  a  tolerable  critic  in 
velvet  and  brocade,  and,  for  aught  I  know,  would  equally  become 
them. 

I  doubt  whether  many  women  took  Swift  seriously 
or  read  the  Dialogues  of  the  Dead  when  the  teacher's 
eye  was  not  upon  them.  I  doubt  if  they  cared  much 
what  men  thought  their  positions  ought  to  be,  be 
cause  they  knew  what  it  really  was;  and  they  were 
willing  that  men  might  have  the  word  of  sovereignty 
as  long  as  they  had  the  fact.  Mary  Wollstonecraft 
might  protest  to  the  utmost,  but  they  were  content 
"  rather  to  be  short-lived  queens  than  labor  to  attain 
the  sober  pleasures  that  arise  from  equality."  Their 
condition  compared  favorably  with  that  of  the  women 
of  other  countries.  As  we  saw  in  another  chapter, 
foreign  observers  spoke  of  them  admiringly,  remark 
ing  upon  their  beauty,  industry,  and  faithfulness  in 
marriage.  As  yet  there  was  no  class  of  rich,  world 
ly,  pleasure-loving  women,  living  in  an  atmosphere 
of  vacuity  and  immorality,  such  as  Hannah  More 
and  her  contemporaries  directed  their  denunciations 
against.  There  were  fast  women  of  fashion,  of  course, 
but  they  were  not  numerous  enough  to  constitute  a 
class  in  any  part  of  the  country.  The  majority  fitted 
Hannah  More's  description,  being — 

Those  women  who  bless,  dignify,  and  truly  adorn  society. 
The  painter,  indeed,  does  not  make  his  fortune  by  their  sitting 
to  him;  the  jeweler  is  neither  brought  into  vogue  by  furnishing 
their  diamonds,  nor  undone  by  not  being  paid  for  them;  the  pros 
perity  of  the  milliner  does  not  depend  on  affixing  their  name  to 
a  cap  or  a  colour;  the  poet  does  not  celebrate  them;  the  novelist 
does  not  dedicate  to  them;  but  they  possess  the  affection  of  their 
6  Si 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

husbands,  the  attachment  of  their  children,  the  esteem  of  the 
wise  and  good,  and,  above  all,  they  possess  His  favour  "whom 
to  know  is  life  eternal." 

We  are  not  to  suppose  that  there  were  no  whispers 
of  rebellion  from  the  women  against  their  subjection. 
Those  who  were  not  " short-lived  queens,"  not  busy 
wives  and  mothers,  whose  hopes  of  sovereignty  were 
waning  or  gone,  murmured  against  an  order  of  things 
which  left  them  derelicts,  but  there  were  very  few  of 
them. 

Mary  Wollstonecraft  had  published  her  Vindica 
tion  of  the  Rights  of  Women  in  England  in  1791,  and 
it  had  been  republished  in  an  American  edition  at 
Philadelphia  in  1794.  There  were  a  few  American 
writers  who  followed  in  her  train  and  wrote  on  woman's 
rights  and  wrongs,  but  they  had  an  audience  of  in 
significant  proportions.  Miss  Wollstonecraft 's  plea 
was  for  a  liberal  human  education  for  women,  and 
against  a  system  which,  she  said,  was  designed  to 
*make  them  alluring  mistresses  rather  than  rational 
wives  and  companions  of  men.  She  was  pitiless  in 
her  arraignment  of  women  for  their  complacency  in 
their  degradation,  and  of  men  for  their  selfishness  in 
forming  women  only  with  reference  to  themselves. 
In  her  power  of  penetration  and  logical  presentation 
it  is  probable  that  none  of  the  myriad  women  writers 
who  have  treated  the  same  subject  since  her  day 
have  surpassed  her.  I  cannot  find  that  she  was  much 
read  in  America,  nor  heeded  at  all.  She  had  no 
school  here.  Her  immoral  life  and  tragic  death  in 
1797  had  furnished  a  concrete  argument  against  her 
philosophy,  which  negatived  her  teachings.  At  this 

82 


WOMEN 

time  her  daughter  was  illustrating  their  effect  by  her 
unlawful  union  with  the  poet  Shelley. 

Americans  practised  marriage  freely,  but  the  habit 
of  unmarrying  had  not  been  acquired  and  divorce 
was  not  a  national  evil.  The  social  life  of  the  country 
existed  without  this  scandal  to  furnish  food  for  con 
versation.  In  1811  Thomas  Law,  an  eccentric  Eng 
lishman,  whose  real  residence  was  in  Washington, 
established  a  legal  residence  in  Vermont  so  as  to  ob 
tain  a  divorce  from  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Parke  Custis, 
a  granddaughter  of  Mrs.  Washington.  They  had 
been  leaders  of  the  society  of  the  capital,  and  their 
separation  and  marital  differences  had  caused  a  social 
commotion.  This  was  probably  the  first  instance  of 
a  divorce  in  the  society  of  the  city,  and  it  stood  alone 
for  many  years.  Regular  divorce  laws  were  a  novelty 
in  the  country.  In  South  Carolina  a  divorce  had  never 
been  granted.  In  New  York  for  a  hundred  years  be 
fore  the  Revolution  there  had  been  no  divorces.  That 
state  had  no  law  on  the  subject  until  1787,  when  the 
courts  of  chancery  were  authorized  to  pronounce  de 
crees  from  the  bonds  of  matrimony  for  adultery  alone; 
but  the  legislature  might  do  so  also;  and  the  law  re 
mained  thus  for  many  years.  Generally  speaking, 
the  states  in  which  English  customs  held  most  tena 
ciously  were  very  strict  in  their  reasons  for  divorce, 
and  those  which  applied  rules  of  their  own  were  more 
free.  Louisiana  had  the  liberal  laws  of  the  code  Na- 
poUon.  Divorce  was  still  exclusively  a  function  of 
the  legislatures  in  Delaware,  Kentucky,  and  Mary 
land.  In  Georgia  the  legislature  might  allow  divorce 
by  a  two-thirds  vote  of  each  house,  after  the  cause 

83 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

had  been  tried  and  a  verdict  given  in  a  court  of  jus 
tice.  In  the  other  states  it  was  a  function  of  the 
courts,  and  the  causes  for  allowing  it  extended  to 
intolerable  ill-usage,  wilful  desertion,  and  habitual 
drunkenness.  In  Connecticut  it  might  be  granted 
even  for  misconduct  permanently  destroying  the  hap 
piness  of  the  person  applying  for  the  divorce;  and 
there  conditions  were  regarded  as  discreditable, ,  and 
it  was  charged  that  divorces  were  obtained  by  col 
lusion  of  married  people.  But  whatever  the  laws 
were,  they  were  rarely  invoked. 

We  have  no  way  of  judging  of  the  extent  of  marital 
infidelity.  It  was  considered  to  be  less  of  a  crime  on 
the  part  of  the  husband  than  of  the  wife,  and  un 
doubtedly  there  were  many  unfaithful  husbands,  and 
very  few  unfaithful  wives.  Heavy  penalties  for  adul 
tery — whipping,  branding,  fining,  imprisonment,  and, 
in  several  New  England  States,  wearing  the  letter 
A  sewed  upon  the  sleeve  of  the  outer  garment,  "of 
color  contrary  to  their  clothes,"  had  prevailed  under 
colonial  laws,  but  they  had  given  way  to  less  drastic 
enactments.  The  punishment  in  Virginia  at  this 
time  was  a  fine  of  only  twenty  dollars.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  however,  the  law  was  seldom  executed  for 
this  offense.  When  punishment  was  inflicted  upon 
a  man  it  usually  came  in  the  form  of  death  by  the 
hand  of  the  dishonored  husband,  a  lawless  retribution 
of  which  public  opinion  approved. 


XI 

PLAYS   AND   SONGS 

A  PEOPLE  in  the  first  flush  of  young  manhood, 
glorying  in  its  vigor,  delighting  in  the  struggle 
of  life,  restless,  immature,  with  an  uncontrollable  im 
pulse  for  action — such  a  people  as  the  Americans 
were  in  1815 — has  not  reached  the  stage  when  it  can 
pause  to  cultivate  art  or  appreciate  it.  There  was 
some  classic  architecture  exemplified  by  the  work  of 
William  Thornton  upon  the  Capitol,  a  few  good 
painters,  especially  of  portraits,  like  the  Peales,  John 
Trumbull,  Gilbert  Stuart,  and  Washington  Allston, 
and  a  very  few  who  carved  in  marble  and  wood,  like 
William  Rush.  An  association  for  promoting  the 
fine  arts,  chartered  in  New  York  in  1808,  was  lan 
guishing,  but  was  revived  in  1816  as  the  American 
Academy  of  Fine  Arts.  The  Pennsylvania  Academy 
of  Fine  Arts  in  Philadelphia,  chartered  in  1806,  and 
the  Society  of  Artists  of  the  United  States,  organized 
in  that  city  in  1810,  were  barely  alive,  but  they  too 
took  on  some  vigor  a  few  years  later  under  a  new 
name.  These  and  a  few  other  similar  struggling  or 
ganizations  served  to  make  all  the  plainer  the  fact 
that  America  was  not  then  a  home  for  art.  That  must 
wait  for  populous  cities,  a  cultured,  traveled  class, 
the  patronage  of  settled  wealth,  leisure,  and  what 

85 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

may  be  called  the  contemplative  stage  of  national 
life. 

But  there  was  a  general  desire  for  amusement,  and 
one  form  which  it  took  was  a  fondness  for  the  play. 
The  more  cultured  people  went  to  the  theater  freely 
and  there  was  no  prejudice  against  it  among  the 
Irish  immigrants;  but  the  middle  classes  of  English 
origin  had  an  inherited  fear  of  it  as  a  dangerous  ex 
citement  to  the  imagination  and  productive  of  im 
moral  conduct.  To  state  the  matter  by  religions — 
and  nearly  everybody  was  religious — Episcopalians 
and  Roman  Catholics  went  to  the  play  without  mis 
givings,  but  Presbyterians,  Methodists,  and  Baptists 
had  a  feeling  that  they  ought  to  be  disciplined  for 
going,  and  Quakers  did  not  dare  to  go.  It  was  be 
lieved  that  seven-tenths  of  the  people  were  opposed 
to  the  theater,  but  those  of  the  seven-tenths  who 
went,  notwithstanding,  and  the  remainder  were  suf 
ficient  in  numbers  to  support  it  in  all  the  cities  and 
towns.  The  actors  were  English  or  Irish,  except  in 
New  Orleans,  where  they  were  French.  Not  a  prom 
inent  actor  on  the  stage  in  1815  was  an  American. 

In  1811,  on  the  night  after  Christmas,  there  was 
a  terrible  fire  in  the  theater  at  Richmond,  when  it 
was  crowded  with  a  holiday  audience.  Seventy  people, 
nearly  all  occupants  of  the  boxes,  were  burned  or 
trampled  to  death,  those  in  the  pit  and  gallery  escap 
ing  unharmed.  It  was  the  popular  belief  that  the 
tragedy  was  a  punishment  of  God  for  attending  a 
play.  The  legislature  of  the  state  forbade  all  public 
amusements  for  four  months.  Later  a  church  was 
erected  on  the  spot  where  the  theater  had  stood,  to 

86 


'  PLAYS  AND  SONGS 

propitiate  divine  justice.  Throughout  the  country 
the  disaster  made  a  deep  impression,  and  it  was  not 
until  1818  that  the  drama  was  revived  in  Richmond, 
when  a  new  theater  was  built  by  James  H.  Caldwell, 
who  had  already  erected  theaters  in  several  other 
Southern  cities. 

In  Massachusetts  all  theatrical  performances  were 
unlawful  till  1793,  when  an  act  was  passed  permitting 
them,  but  in  1799  Connecticut  passed  a  law  which 
closed  the  theater  at  Hartford.  The  law  had  been 
evaded  in  Boston,  and  when  the  ban  was  lifted  the 
Federal  Street  Theater,  a  handsome  playhouse,  was 
opened  with  appropriate  ceremonies.  A  gold  medal, 
offered  as  a  prize  for  the  best  poetical  prologue,  was 
won  by  Thomas  Paine,  the  son  of  Robert  Treat  Paine, 
a  signer  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence ;  but  soon 
afterward  Thomas  petitioned  the  legislature  for  per 
mission  to  change  his  Christian  name  to  that  which 
his  father  bore,  so  that  he  might  not  have  the  same 
name  as  the  hated  infidel  who  had  written  the  Age 
of  Reason.  Paine's  prologue  was  a  poem  character 
istic  of  the  taste  of  the  day.  It  began  with  a  descrip 
tion  of  the  drama  in  Athens,  passed  on  to  Rome,  spoke 
of  the  dark  ages,  and  then  introduced  Albion  and 
Shakespeare.  Next,  it  was  natural  to  say  of  the 
Muse: 

Long  has  she  cast  a  fondly  wistful  eye 
On  the  pure  climate  of  the  Western  sky, 

and  presently  to  land  her  in  Boston. 

In  protest  against  the  new  playhouse  another  poet 
offered  a  prologue  running  thus: 

87 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

If  alien  vices  here  unknown  before 

Come,  shameless,  to  pollute  Columbia's  shore, 

If  here  profan'd  Religion's  sacred  name 

Be  dressed  in  ridicule  and  marked  with  shame — 

and  much  more  to  the  same  affect.  Such  was  the 
opposition  to  the  play  that  a  committee  of  substantial 
citizens  of  New  York  refused  one  hundred  dollars 
offered  for  the  poor  of  the  city,  because  it  came  from 
the  manager  of  a  theater.  One  peculiar  custom  pre 
vailed  which  justified  some  of  the  strictures  against 
the  theater.  A  number  of  the  proscenium  boxes  in 
the  large  playhouses  were  given  up  to  the  prostitutes. 
There  they  sat  together  in  a  conspicuous  part  of  the 
house,  decked  out  in  all  their  professional  finery  and 
blandishments.  It  was  a  shameless  spectacle,  which 
friends  as  well  as  foes  of  the  stage  protested  against, 
but  which  was  not  abolished  till  some  years  later. 
As  for  the  players  themselves,  they  set  no  worse  ex 
amples  than  actors  have  always  done.  There  was  a 
goodly  proportion  of  blackguards  among  them,  and 
some  of  them  died  of  drink.  Divorces  were  very  rare, 
but  elopements  occurred.  A  few  moved  in  the  circles 
of  good  society  and  became  worthy  members  of  their 
communities.  All  seemed  to  take  kindly  to  the  new 
country,  and  most  of  those  who  came  over  to  join 
the  several  good  American  companies  never  returned 
to  England.  There  was  no  difficulty  in  recruiting  the 
companies,  the  profession  having  discovered,  as  an 
American  manager  expressed  it,  that  "a  continent  ex 
isted  oversea,  called  America,  where  some  of  the  peo 
ple  were  white,  spoke  English,  and  went  to  see  plays." 
Many  of  the  actors  came  from  provincial  boards,  not 

88 


PLAYS  AND  SONGS 

yet  having  won  a  London  reputation,  but  there  were 
several  who  would  have  done  credit  to  any  stage. 
Thomas  Abthorpe  Cooper,  a  tragedian  of  merit;  Mrs. 
Oldmixon;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Darley;  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Hodgkinson;  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hallam;  Mrs.  Merry,  and 
Mrs.  Whitlock,  a  member  of  the  famous  Kemble  fam 
ily,  a  sister  of  Mrs.  Siddons  and  possessed  of  similar 
talents;  and  John  E.  Harwood,  who  married  Miss 
Bache,  a  granddaughter  of  Benjamin  Franklin — were 
some  of  the  players  who  were  deservedly  popular. 
The  first  great  actor  to  come  over  was  George  Fred 
erick  Cooke,  in  1811,  but  he  was  shattered  from  dissi 
pation  and  died  soon  afterward.  He  was  followed 
by  Joseph  George  Holman,  an  actor  of  equal  merit. 
Companies  did  not  travel  regularly,  but  they  moved 
from  one  city  to  another  at  intervals,  and  their  per 
sonnel  changed  constantly.  Stars  traveled  alone  and 
played  with  different  companies.  Thus  a  playgoer 
in  a  large  city  saw  all  the  chief  actors  in  the  course 
of  two  or  three  seasons. 

In  some  of  the  theaters  there  were  good  orchestras. 
At  the  Philadelphia  Theater  the  conductor  was 
Alexander  Reinagle,  who  played  the  harpsichord 
in  the  orchestra.  The  conductor  in  New  York  was 
James  Hewitt,  a  musician  of  attainments  hardly  less 
than  Reinagle's.  Many  of  the  musicians  were  for 
eigners  of  decayed  fortune  —  at  New]  York,  for 
instance,  a  French  nobleman  who  had  fled  from 
Paris  during  the  Revolution,  a  French  army  offi 
cer  who  had  made  an  unfortunate  marriage,  and 
a  refugee  from  the  slave  insurrection  at  Santo  Do 
mingo. 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

A  theater  comprised  the  pit,  where  people  of  all 
sorts  sat  on  benches,  paying  for  their  tickets  from 
fifty  to  seventy-five  cents;  above  this  pit  was  a  tier 
or  sometimes  two  tiers  of  boxes  patronized  by  wealthy 
and  fashionable  people  who  paid  at  least  a  dollar 
for  a  seat.  Above  the  boxes  was  the  gallery,  where  the 
rabble  went,  paying  twenty-five  cents  each  for  admis 
sion.  The  theater  built  in  Philadelphia  on  Chestnut 
Street  in  1792  was,  until  it  was  burned  in  1820,  prob 
ably  the  best  in  the  country.  The  auditorium  was 
semicircular,  and  there  were  two  complete  rows  of 
boxes  besides  the  pit  and  gallery.  The  Boston  thea 
ter,  also  a  fine  one,  had  a  square  auditorium,  only  one 
row  of  boxes,  and  held  500  people.  In  New  York 
a  theater  had  been  built  on  Chatham  Street  opposite 
the  park.  It  had  seats  for  2,500  people  and  was  the 
largest  in  the  country.  It  was  lighted  by  many  lamps 
and  candles  in  brackets.  There  was  a  great  orna 
mental  chandelier  suspended  from  the  ceiling,  and  the 
grease  from  the  tallow  candles  dripped  upon  people 
in  the  pit  who  were  sitting  under  it.  In  Washington 
there  was  a  good  theater  which  had  been  opened  in 
1800. 

The  bill  offered  at  a  theater  must  please  many  dif 
ferent  tastes,  for  there  were  no  folk- theaters.  Rich 
and  poor,  high  and  low,  went  to  the  same  perform 
ance.  The  play  bill  of  the  Richmond  theater  on  the 
night  of  the  fire  is  typical.  Placide,  whose  benefit  it 
was,  was  a  well-known  actor-manager  and  afterward 
played  at  the  theater  at  Charleston: 


LAST  WEEK  OF  PERFORMANCE  THIS  SEASON 


MR.  PLACIDE'S  BENEFIT 

WILL  CERTAINLY  TAKE   PLACE   ON 
THURSDAY    NEXT 

WHEN  WILL  BE  PRESENTED,  AN  ENTIRE  NEW  PLAY, 

TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  FRENCH  OF  DlDEROT, 

BY  A  GENTLEMAN  OF  THIS  CITY,  CALLED 

1  THE    FATHER 

OR 

FAMILY    FEUDS 

[The  caste  follows] 

AT  THE  END  OF  THE  PLAY 

A    COMIC    SONG By  MR.  WEST 

A    DANCE By  Miss  E.  PLACIDE 

SONG By  Miss  THOMAS 

A    HORNPIPE By  Miss  PLACIDE 

To  WHICH  WILL  BE  ADDED  (FOR  THE  FIRST  TIME  HERE)  THE 
FAVORITE  NEW  PANTOMIME  OF 

RAYMOND  AND  AGNES: 
OR,  THE  BLEEDING  NUN 

[Follows  the  caste] 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

A  long  "description  of  the  principal  scenes  in  the 
Pantomime"  follows.  Often,  however,  the  after-piece 
was  a  farce. 

The  bill  at  Richmond  shows  that  there  was  a  fond 
ness  for  foreign  plays,  but  the  public  taste  took  a  wide 
range.  Shakespeare,  Sheridan,  translations  and  adap 
tations  of  the  German  playwright  Augustus  von  Kotz- 
ebue,  were  regularly  performed.  There  was  a  demand 
for  American  plays,  and  William  Dunlap,  the  most 
prolific  American  playwright,  produced  among  many 
others,  "Andre,"  "The  Glory  of  Columbia— her 
Yoemanry,"  and  "The  Soldier  of  '76."  Mordecai 
M.  Noah,  afterward  a  conspicuous  journalist,  con 
tributed  "Marion,  the  Hero  of  Lake  George,"  "Oh 
Yes,  or  the  New  Constitution,"  "The  Siege  of  York- 
town"  ;  William  Joor,  "The  Battle  of  Eutaw  Springs  "; 
James  N.  Barker,  "The  Embargo,  or  What  News?" 
and  the  "Indian  Princess."  The  frontier  play  had 
not  yet  come  into  vogue,  but  the  Indian  play  was  per 
formed.  Dunlap  had  already  dramatized  the  story 
of  John  Smith  and  Pocahontas  and  it  served  as  a  theme 
for  plays  of  several  other  authors. 

The  audiences  at  the  theaters  often  gave  interesting 
exhibitions  of  the  public  mind.  On  the  night  of  No 
vember  25,  1793,  the  anniversary  of  the  day  when 
the  British  had  evacuated  New  York  ten  years  before, 
there  was  a  remarkable  demonstration  at  the  theater 
in  the  city.  Citizen  Genet,  the  first  envoy  from  re 
publican  France,  had  exchanged  congratulatory  ad 
dresses  with  Governor  George  Clinton  in  the  course 
of  the  day.  In  the  evening  the  theater  was  crowded 
to  hear  Murphy's  play,  "The  Grecian  Daughter," 

92 


PLAYS  AND  SONGS 

Mrs.  Melmouth  taking  the  leading  part.  In  the  boxes 
on  one  side  of  the  stage  sat  the  French  naval  officers, 
and  on  the  other  side  the  American  officers,  all  in  full 
uniform.  The  pit  was  filled  with  French  sailors  and 
American  militiamen.  As  soon  as  the  orchestra  ap 
peared  the  audience  called  for  "Qa  ira."  The  strains 
of  that  lively  air,  then  the  song  of  the  Revolution 
ists,  had  hardly  begun  when  the  Frenchmen  and  then 
the  Americans  began  to  sing  it. 

Ah!    ga  ira,  ga  ira,  ga  ira, 

Le  peuple,  en  ce  jours  sans  cesse  repete  ahl 

Ah!    ga  ira,  ga  ira,  ga  ira. 

Malgre  mutins  tout  reussira 

Et  nous  allons  chanter  alleluia. 

Ah!  ga  ira,  ga  ira,  ga  ira! 

It  is  not  conceivable  that  the  Americans  sang  all  the 
French  words,  but  a  repetition  of  the  first  line  was 
easy  and  served  all  essential  purposes.  Next  came  the 
"Marseillaise"  sung  with  solemn  enthusiasm  while  the 
audience  stood  up.  Then  came  tumultuous  shouts  and 
counter-shouts  of,  "Vivent  les  Frangois,"  and  "Vivent 
les  Americains"  The  curtain  rose  and  the  audience 
was  silent.  In  the  course  of  the  play  the  Grecian 
daughter  strikes  to  the  earth  the  tyrant  who  is  about 
to  kill  her  father,  and  when  this  part  was  reached  the 
applause  became  a  mighty  shout  of  approval.  Old 
theater-goers,  indulging  in  reminiscences  many  years 
afterward,  declared  that  never  had  they  witnessed  a 
scene  of  such  elevated  enthusiasm  as  that  which  took 
place  at  the  theater  in  New  York  on  this  night. 
Twenty-three  years  later  no  foreign  cause  could  have 
aroused  such  fervor.  The  public  temper  had  com- 

93 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

pletely  changed  and  "Qa  ira"  was  already  forgotten. 

The  relationship  between  the  drama  and  music 
was,  of  course,  intimate,  and  many  of  the  actors  were 
also  singers. 

There  was  no  peculiarly  American  music,  but,  as 
Mr.  Oscar  G.  Sonneck,  the  historian  of  American 
music,  has  remarked,  there  was  no  more  reason  why  an 
American  music  should  be  made  than  there  was  for 
making  an  American  language.  The  early  settlers 
had  their  music  when  they  came,  and  kept  it.  There 
was  a  phase  of  American  life  that  was  bombastic 
and  pretentious  in  tone,  which  the  people  confused 
with  the  heroic,  and  the  same  audiences  which  liked 
the  " Grecian  Daughter"  and  Paine's  prologue  liked 
the  heavy  Presidents'  marches,  which  were  composed 
in  honor  of  each  of  the  Presidents  and  played  on  public 
occasions,  and  did  service,  to  some  extent,  for  national 
airs.  Better  than  these,  however,  was  the  English 
hymn,  "God  Save  the  King,"  to  which  Americans 
adapted  words  of  their  own  from  the  time  of  independ 
ence.  As  yet,  however,  no  settled  version  had  been 
accepted.  In  1798  Joseph  Hopkinson,  the  son  of 
Francis  Hopkinson,  wrote  the  words  of  "Hail,  Co 
lumbia,"  and  they  were  set  to  the  music  of  the  Presi 
dent's  march  which  Philip  Phile  had  composed  in 
Washington's  honor.  Probably  more  people  knew 
the  words  in  1815  than  know  them  now,  for  it  was  bet 
ter  suited  to  their  poetic  taste.  Francis  Scott  Key's 
"Star-spangled  Banner"  was  composed  to  commem 
orate  an  incident  of  the  war  of  1812,  and  sung  to  the 
air  of  an  English  drinking-song,  which  everybody 
knew.  "Yankee  Doodle"  was  there,  come  whence 

94 


PLAYS  AND  SONGS 

no  one  knew,  and  its  authorship  claimed  by  nobody, 
but  liked  by  the  gallery  and  pit,  and  many  other 
patriotic  songs  with  European  airs  which  had  become 
naturalized  as  American. 

Of  indigenous  music  there  could  be  only  that  of 
the  Indian.  The  white  man  liked  to  learn  many  things 
from  him,  especially  his  woodcraft  and  some  of  his 
methods  of  fighting,  but  never  cared  to  learn  his  music. 
In  fact,  the  tonal  method  was  so  different  that  it  was 
not  music  at  all  to  white  ears. 

But  it  was  different  with  the  music  of  the  negroes. 
They  had  developed  a  local  music  full  of  harmony 
and  beauty.  It  was  made  by  welding  their  native 
chants  upon  the  white  man's  hymns,  lullabies,  and 
folk-songs.  They  were  more  passionately  fond  of 
music  than  the  whites. 

Nevertheless,  there  was  much  music  among  the 
people.  Many  countrymen  and  working  -  people 
played  the  fiddle,  the  frontiersman,  according  to  tra 
dition,  sometimes  to  frighten  off  the  wolves.  The 
boatman,  sailing  down  the  river  with  the  breeze 
behind  him,  leaned  against  the  tiller  and  fiddled  a 
particular  tune;  travelers  often  carried  a  musical  in 
strument  with  them.  Monologues,  partly  recitative, 
partly  sung,  and  partly  played,  being  humorous  de 
scriptions  of  travels  and  adventures,  were  composed. 
The  singing-school  where  hymn-singing  was  taught 
was  common  in  New  England,  and  the  itinerant 
teacher  of  psalmody,  with  a  pitch-pipe  for  his  musical 
instrument,  was  frequently  met  with  in  the  East. 
For  the  gentleman  the  ''gentleman's  flute"  was  then 
the  fashion,  and  European  travelers  often  remarked 

95 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

on  the  skill  and  taste  with  which  the  ladies  played 
upon  the  harpsichord,  pianoforte,  guitar,  or  harp. 
Higher  music  flourished  encouragingly.  In  New  Eng 
land  many  of  the  inhabitants  still  doubted  whether 
any  singing  was  not  ungodly,  unless  it  was  of  hymns ; 
but  concerts  had  been  patronized  by  the  more  cul 
tured  people  of  Boston,  and  in  1815,  on  Washington's 
birthday,  there  was  a  great  musical  festival  in  honor 
of  peace  with  England.  An  audience  of  over  nine 
hundred  persons  gathered  in  King's  Chapel  at  the 
corner  of  School  and  Tremont  streets  to  listen  to  an 
oratorio.  The  chorus  numbered  nearly  one  hundred 
voices,  all  of  them  male  but  ten,  and  nearly  all  Amer 
icans.  Already  there  were  piano-makers  in  that  city, 
and  a  musical  journal,  The  Euterpiad,  was  published 
in  1820.  There  had  been  concerts  in  Boston  for  many 
years,  and  this  was  true  of  all  the  chief  cities  of  the 
country.  All  of  them  had  musical  societies.  In 
Charleston  the  St.  Cecelia  Society  was  giving  con 
certs,  having  been  organized  for  that  purpose  as  early 
as  1762.  Here,  as  in  Europe,  the  concerts  usually 
closed  with  a  ball,  and  in  course  of  time  to  give  the 
ball  became  the  chief  business  of  the  St.  Cecelia 
Society  and  usurped  the  place  of  the  concert ;  but  this 
was  after  the  time  of  which  we  are  writing.  The 
concerts  were  both  vocal  and  instrumental,  and  the 
audience  listened  to  Haydn,  Pleyel,  Davaux,  Corelli, 
Karl  Stamitz,  Handel,  and  other  standard  composers. 
The  composers  in  America  were  not  many,  but  they 
were  respectable.  William  Billings,  Andrew  Law,  and 
Oliver  Holden  were  Americans  who  had  devoted  them 
selves  chiefly  to  psalmody,  and  Francis  Hopkinson  to 

96 


PLAYS  AND  SONGS 

secular  music.  Among  the  emigrants  who  had  set 
tled  in  the  country  were  several  men  known  to  musi 
cal  history — besides  Alexander  Reinagle  and  James 
Hewitt,  Benjamin  Carr,  Joseph  Gehot,  and  Gottlieb 
Graupner. 

As  the  theater  existed  in  every  city  or  town,  the 
union  of  music  and  acting  was  a  natural  development. 
Up  to  1800  many  English  operas  had  been  performed, 
and  opera  went  forward  rapidly  after  that.  By  1815 
every  city  had  made  its  acquaintance.  Baltimore  had 
seen  French  opera  in  1791,  and,  beginning  in  1810,  it 
was  regularly  performed  in  New  Orleans,  whence  it 
made  its  way  experimentally  into  other  cities. 
7 


XII 

COMMON   PEOPLE 

ONLY  an  insignificant  proportion  of  the  popula 
tion  of  the  United  States  lived  in  cities  in  1815, 
and  a  very  small  proportion  worked  in  factories  or 
mills.  Universal  manhood  suffrage  did  not  exist  and 
very  few  laborers  could  vote,  so  there  was  no  legis 
lation  in  the  interest  of  labor.  There  was  no  labor 
problem,  and  socialism  was  unheard  of.  With  a  scat 
tered  population  extensive  combinations  of  laborers 
were  impossible.  The  working-day  was  from  twelve 
to  fifteen  hours  long,  and  it  was  not  till  ten  years  later 
that  a  movement  was  started  to  shorten  the  day  to 
ten  hours,  the  motive  back  of  it  being  humane,  but 
not  political.  There  was  no  legal  restriction  on  the 
employment  of  women  and  children,  and  they  con 
stituted  a  majority  of  the  employees  in  the  factories. 
There  the  discipline  was  what  the  employers  chose 
to  make  it,  and  in  some  instances  it  included  the  use 
of  the  whip  upon  the  women  and  children  to  urge  them 
to  work.  Work  began  at  half  past  four  in  the  morning 
in  some  mills.  In  New  England  the  hands  were  taxed 
by  the  employers  for  the  support  of  the  churches,  and 
continued  absence  from  church  services  on  Sunday 
was  punished  by  dismissal.  The  wages  of  the  men 
operatives  were  from  sixty-five  to  seventy  cents  a 

98 


COMMON  PEOPLE 

day.  There  were  a  few  societies  of  mechanics  for 
benevolent  purposes — of  journeymen  shipwrights  and 
of  house  carpenters  in  New  York,  for  example.  Oc 
casionally  there  were  mutinies  in  the  factories,  and 
in  1802  some  sailors  in  New  York  made  a  demon 
stration,  paraded  the  streets  with  a  band  of  music, 
"recruited  their  ranks  from  other  sailors,  and  demanded 
an  increase  in  their  wages  from  ten  dollars  a  month 
to  fourteen  dollars.  There  was  no  popular  sympathy 
with  them;  they  were  put  down  with  a  strong  hand, 
and  the  leaders  were  lodged  in  jail.  Organized  strikes 
were  unknown.  Some  of  the  cities  regulated  the  work 
and  pay  for  a  few  services.  In  New  York  chimney 
sweeps  were  allowed  to  work  in  winter  only  from  six 
o'clock  in  the  morning  till  four  in  the  afternoon,  and 
in  the  summer  from  five  in  the  morning  till  six  in  the 
evening,  and  no  boys  under  eleven  years  of  age  could 
be  employed.  The  price  for  sweeping  the  chimney 
of  a  high  house  was  fixed  at  44  cents.  Porters  using 
a  wheelbarrow  might  charge  12^  cents  for  taking  a 
load  half  a  mile,  and  25  cents  for  more  than  half  a 
mile  and  less  than  a  mile.  For  a  load  carried  by  hand- 
barrow  the  charge  was  nearly  twice  as  much,  and  by 
handcart  18  cents  for  half  a  mile  and  31  cents  up  to  a 
mile.  By  cart  and  horse  the  charge  was  12^  cents 
for  taking  a  bale  of  cotton,  barrel  of  oil  or  potash,  box 
of  Havana  sugar,  or  100  feet  of  lumber  a  distance  less 
than  two  miles,  and  one-third  more  for  every  addi 
tional  half-mile.  For  the  same  distance  3 1  cents  was 
the  charge  for  a  hogshead  of  beer  or  molasses  contain 
ing  60  to  90  gallons;  37^  cents  for  a  load  of  bricks 
or  earthware  over  1,000  pounds  in  weight,  or  a  pipe 

99 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

of  brandy;  50  cents  for  a  load  of  furniture;  $1.00  for 
a  load  of  loose  hay;  $5  for  every  cable  whole  shot 
above  15  inches  in  circumference.  Hacking  coaches 
and  carriages  could  charge,  for  less  than  a  mile,  25 
cents  per  passenger,  and  50  cents  for  any  distance 
within  the  lamp-and-watch  district  above  a  mile;  for 
conveying  one  or  more  passengers  on  a  tour,  $i  or 
$2.50;  to  Kingsbridge  and  back,  keeping  the  carriage 
all  day,  $5. 

There  was  no  specialization  in  the  trades.  The  ap 
prentice  system  prevailed,  and  the  boy  who  was 
bound  out  learned  everything  about  the  trade — in 
shoemaking,  for  example,  from  the  tanning  of  the 
leather  to  finishing  the  shoe.  The  apprentice  lived 
with  his  employer,  ate  at  his  table,  slept  under  his 
roof,  and  was  subject  to  his  discipline  outside  of  the 
workshop  as  well  as  in  it. 

Generally  speaking,  the  wages  were  high  and  there 
was  a  brisk  demand  for  workmen.  As  industries  were 
localized,  there  was  a  considerable  variation  in  the 
wages  in  the  different  sections.  In  Massachusetts, 
where  the  pay  was  good,  horseshoers  received  90 
cents  a  day  and  found  themselves,  or  45  cents  with 
board  and  lodging;  ship  carpenters,  $1.25  a  day, 
boarding  themselves;  common  laborers  from  50  cents 
to  $1.50.  In  the  South  much  of  the  labor  was  per 
formed  by  negroes  hired  out  by  their  owners,  and  the 
wages  were  about  $6  a  month  with  board.  Boat- 
hands  on  the  Mississippi  were  paid  as  much  as  $i  a 
day  with  board;  laborers  on  the  public  roads  $i  to 
$1.25  a  day,  with  board.  The  board  always  included 
a  daily  allowance  of  whisky  or  rum.  Much  of  the 

100 


COMMON  PEOPLE 

skilled  labor  in  Pennsylvania  was  performed  by  re- 
demptioners,  the  wages  going  to  those  who  had  been 
at  the  charge  of  bringing  the  workmen  from  Eu 
rope.  There  was  competition  to  get  workmen  for 
extensive  city  improvements,  and  a  city  government 
often  advertised  for  laborers  in  the  newspapers  of 
other  cities.  Working  on  the  streets  were  many  Irish 
immigrants. 

The  chief  element  among  the  immigrants  was  Irish, 
but  the  great  tide  of  immigration  had  not  begun,  the 
number  admitted  each  year  averaging  5,000.  The 
inducements  that  the  country  offered  were  becoming 
known  to  the  working  classes  of  Europe,  however. 
Guides  for  immigrants  were  being  issued,  telling  of 
conditions  in  America,  the  wages  offered  and  the  cost 
of  living.  The  wages  were  fully  double  those  paid 
in  England  and  four  times  as  much  as  those  paid  in 
France,  and  the  working-man  was  under  none  of  the 
compulsions  to  work  and  pay  taxes  which  harassed 
him  in  European  countries.  He  was  free  to  work  for 
any  employer  he  chose,  and  to  travel.  If  he  had  no 
property  he  paid  no  direct  taxes.  The  cost  of  living 
was  much  less  than  in  Europe,  bread  being  one-third 
less  than  in  any  part  of  England,  and  beef,  mutton, 
pork,  and  poultry  one-half  the  price  that  prevailed 
in  London.  The  same  proportions  maintained  in 
groceries,  and  house  rent  and  fuel  even  near  New 
York  were  as  low  as  they  were  in  any  part  of  Europe. 
Fruit  cost  one-tenth  as  much  as  it  did  in  England; 
beer,  wine,  spirits,  furniture,  and  even  farm  imple 
ments  were  cheaper.  Some  of  the  city  governments 
fixed  the  price  and  standard  of  bread.  In  New  York 

101 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

it  was  i2>£  cents  for  a  full  loaf  weighing  at  least 
38  2-53  ounces,  and  6^4  cents  for  a  half -loaf.  If  a 
man  chose  to  board  he  could  find  a  good  boarding- 
house  for  less  than  two  dollars  a  week. 

The  few  people  who  employed  household  servants 
complained  that  it  was  hard  to  get  them  and  that 
they  were  inefficient;  and  well-to-do  foreigners 
thought  it  a  hardship  that  they  must  not  call  them 
servants,  but  "help."  They  found  them  untrained, 
disrespectful,  and  disobedient.  If  they  brought  their 
servants  with  them  they  left  their  service  almost  im 
mediately  for  more  independent  employment.  Such 
household  servants  as  there  were  were  Irish  immi 
grants,  a  few  were  farmers*  daughters  for  whom  it 
was  a  temporary  employment  only,  many  were  free 
negroes,  and  some  were  redemptioners.  In  the  South 
the  servants  were  slaves,  except  a  few  white  house 
keepers,  and  here  there  was  less  complaint  by  em 
ployers  and  the  supply  was  plentiful.  Those  in  the 
South  who  did  not  own  slaves  hired  the  slaves  of 
others  as  servants,  and  paid  them  less  than  the  white 
servants  received  at  the  North.  There  the  best  women 
servants  received  about  fifty  dollars  a  year.  The 
household  of  a  well-to-do  resident  of  Washington 
might  comprise  a  white  housekeeper,  who  was  also 
a  seamstress  and  made  part  of  the  clothing  even  for 
the  man  of  the  house,  besides  doing  the  clear  starch 
ing  and  ironing,  a  colored  cook,  a  waitress,  and  a  cham 
bermaid.  The  charge  of  insubordination  was  not  made 
against  servants  alone,  but  against  all  members  of  the 
working  class.  They  had  abolished  the  word ' '  master ' ' 
and  held  themselves  to  be  the  equals  of  their  employers. 

102 


COMMON  PEOPLE 

The  hired  laborer  on  the  farm  did  not  constitute 
a  class.  He  might  be  a  young  man  filling  in  an  inter 
val  before  he  should  have  a  farm  of  his  own,  or  perhaps 
a  thriftless  fellow  deficient  in  enterprise  who  chose 
to  live  from  hand  to  mouth  and  stay  in  one  neigh 
borhood.  How  an  energetic  and  thrifty  man  could 
rise  can  be  shown  from  a  typical  case.  The  man  was 
thirty  years  old,  married,  and  had  three  children. 
His  father  gave  him  $500  to  begin  the  world  with 
and  he  went  to  Ohio.  He  took  a  cargo  of  flour  down 
the  river  to  New  Orleans  and  sold  it,  thereby  increas 
ing  his  capital  to  $900.  Then  he  bought  a  farm  of 
250  acrQS  of  land,  65  acres  being  cleared,  for  $3,500. 
In  a  few  years  it  was  paid  for  and  he  was  worth  $7,000. 
The  farm  laborer  received  wages  of  from  $8  per  month 
in  winter  to  $10  in  summer,  with  board  and  lodging, 
living  in  the  farmer's  family  and  eating  at  his  table. 
In  the  West  the  wages  were  higher.  The  hours  of 
work  were  from  sunrise  to  sunset.  Usually  the  farmer 
and  his  family  did  all  the  work  themselves,  the  boys 
going  into  the  field  as  soon  as  they  were  strong  enough, 
and  the  girls  helping  their  mother  in  the  house  and 
the  dairy.  The  household  employments  included 
spinning,  weaving,  knitting  and  sewing,  making  but 
ter  and  cheese,  stuffing  sausages,  salting  meat,  and 
preserving. 

Entertainment  was  not  wanting  for  them,  and  it 
often  combined  work  and  pleasure.  There  were  quilt- 
ing-parties,  or  "quiltings,"  as  they  were  commonly 
called.  ' '  She  was  invited, ' '  says  a  farmer,  ' '  to  Tabitha 
Twist's  quilting,  and  my  girls  were  left  out  of  the  list." 
Husking-bees  and  similar  parties  lightened  the  routine 

103 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

of  life.  The  men  liked  rough  sports,  and  in  some  parts 
of  the  country  fought  in  a  ring,  with  spectators,  like 
prize-fighters.  They  attended  horse-races  and  raced 
their  own  horses.  They  cultivated  the  trot  ting-horse 
and  raced  him  under  the  saddle.  They  amused  them 
selves  with  cock-fighting.  They  were  good  shots  with 
the  rifle  and  shotgun,  and  hunted  a  great  deal.  The 
boys  were  taught  to  shoot  at  an  early  age.  They 
hunted  foxes  with  hounds,  following  on  foot  or  horse 
back.  There  were  bowling-greens  in  many  of  the 
villages.  They  played  cards  and  checkers  and  bought 
lottery  tickets.  Indulgence  in  strong  drink  was  the 
curse  of  every  class  and  every  section,  but  the  greatest 
curse  to  the  working  class.  There  was  a  coarse  song 
in  vogue  among  them,  called  " Nothing  Like  Grog," 
which  shows  the  degradation  of  the  tipplers.  One 
verse  of  it  will  suffice: 

My  father,  when  last  I  from  Guinea 

Returned  with  abundance  of  wealth, 
Cried,  "Jack,  never  be  such  a  ninny 

To  drink."    Says  I," Father,  your  health." 
So  I  passed  round  the  stuff;   soon  he  twigg'd  it, 

And  it  set  the  old  codger  agog, 
And  he  swigg'd,  and  mother  and  sister  and  brother 
And  I  swigg'd,  and  all  of  us  swigg'd 

And  swore  there  was  nothing  like  grog. 

The  temperate  men  who  would  not  drink  rum  or 
whisky  drank  cider.  The  women  were  sober,  but  many 
of  them  used  snuff. 

In  every  farm-house  there  was  sure  to  be  a  Bible, 
bought  usually  from  a  peddler,  and  he  purveyed 
lighter  literature  also,  but  the  people  who  read  seldom 
went  much  beyond  the  Bible  and  a  few  religious  works. 

104 


COMMON  PEOPLE 

All  day  they  were  too  busy  to  read,  and  at  night  a 
tallow  candle  was  not  a  good  light  for  reading,  so  the 
story-teller  came  naturally  into  being  to  beguile  the 
evening  hours.  Religion  furnished  them  with  mental 
excitement,  and  it  was  complained  that  when  a  re 
vival  was  in  progress  the  women  neglected  their 
household  duties  to  attend  the  meetings.  Strolling 
preachers  came  often  and  were  regarded  as  a  greater 
nuisance  even  than  the  peddlers.  Quack  doctors, 
too,  robbed  the  credulous.  "Here  comes  the  famous 
Doctor  Dolt,"  says  the  Farmer's  Almanac,  "with  his 
skunk's  grease  and  liverwort.  A  larnt  man  is  the 
Doctor.  Once  he  was  a  simple  knight  of  the  laps  tone 
and  pegging  awl;  but  now  he  is  blazoned  on  the  first 
order  of  quack  heraldry." 

The  people  were  normally  superstitious.  They  be 
lieved  in  miraculous  cures.  In  1813  a  man  appeared 
in  Vermont,  who  declared  he  could  cure  all  diseases 
by  prayer.  Patients  flocked  to  him  by  the  thousands 
and  his  letters  accumulated  by  the  bushel.  It  was  a 
common  thing  to  dig  for  treasure,  the  hiding-place 
having  been  revealed  to  some  one  in  a  dream.  As 
many  people  were  prejudiced  against  banks,  and  as 
banks  were,  moreover,  not  accessible  to  all  who  saved 
money,  much  of  it  was  hidden,  a  favorite  hiding-place 
being  a  hole  in  the  ground.  A  magic  hazel  wand  was 
often  used  to  locate  an  abandoned  hoard .  One  who  was 
born  "with  a  veil  over  his  face,"  as  they  termed  it, 
or  a  caul,  had  supernatural  gifts,  and  was  apt  to  carry 
a  talisman  in  the  form  of  a  small  stone  which  did  not 
differ  in  appearance  from  other  pebbles,  but  enabled 
him  to  find  anything.  As  the  digging  under  super- 

105 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

natural  direction  never  revealed  anything,  it  confirmed 
the  belief  of  the  diggers  in  the  devil,  because  he  alone 
could  have  run  off  with  the  gold. 

There  should  have  been  enough  for  good  doctors 
to  do,  for  salt  meat,  heavy  pastry,  and  fiery  rum  made 
dyspepsia  common,  and  cold  houses  produced  rheu 
matism,  and  in  the  swampy  regions  the  malaria- 
communicating  mosquito  flourished.  The  diet  was 
not,  however,  altogether  bad  on  the  farms.  Most  of 
them  had  a  "sarse"  patch  where  vegetables  were 
grown,  and  there  was  abundance  of  milk,  butter,  and 
cheese.  The  mainstay  of  the  family,  however,  was 
the  pork-barrel,  but  beef  was  also  used  a  great  deal. 
A  good  dinner  consisted  of  boiled  pork  and  potatoes, 
or  salt  beef,  turnips,  and  stewed  pumpkins. 

The  advice  which  the  people  gave  one  another 
shows  what  they  considered  to  be  their  every-day 
evils  and  virtues.  Scolding,  back-biting  women,  and 
lazy,  tipsy  husbands  were  inveighed  against,  and  the 
husband  who  did  not  help  his  wife  received  unmeas 
ured  censure.  "A  large  woodpile  is  one  sign  of  a  good 
husband,"  they  said.  Profanity  was  a  vile  practice 
which  should  be  stamped  out.  Above  all  things,  the 
children  of  the  family  must  be  educated,  the  schools, 
the  mentors  insisted,  being  the  safeguard  of  the  coun 
try.  Direct  charity  was  the  duty  of  all.  Thus,  a 
farmer  is  represented  as  being  about  to  buy  a  lottery 
ticket,  when  a  neighbor  advises  him  not  to  throw  his 
money  away,  and  he  changes  his  mind.  He  calls  his 
son,  "Here,  Tom,  take  this  five-dollar  bill  to  the  Widow 
Lonesome ;  tell  her  it  is  at  her  disposal ;  then  hasten  back 
to  your  school.  I  will  to  my  team  and  my  wood-lot." 


XIII 

THE    SUNSHINE    OF    HUMOR 

THE  sense  of  humor  of  a  nation  rises  from  the 
common  people.  It  rests  upon  peculiarities  and 
contrasts  in  characters  and  dispositions,  producing 
strange  remarks  and  situations  which  appear  to  be 
ludicrous  to  people  of  all  classes.  A  touch  of  real 
humor  makes  all  men  kin,  and  a  joke  is  a  joke  to 
the  scholar  as  well  as  the  clown.  Foreigners  usually 
found  the  Americans  a  solemn  people,  and  merry 
they  certainly  were  not;  but  they  were  developing 
a  sense  of  humor  so  peculiarly  their  own  that  few 
foreigners  understood  it.  Unfortunately,  the  record 
of  it  is  meager,  for  the  weight  of  English  literary  tra 
ditions  hung  so  heavily  upon  the  writers  that,  when 
they  wished  to  be  funny  they  tried  to  write  like  Eng 
lish  humorists. 

The  fragmentary  record  is  sufficient,  however,  to 
enable  us  to  form  a  reasonably  definite  idea  of  what 
the  people  laughed  at.  Of  course,  many  of  the  jokes 
were  vulgar,  as  jokes  at  that  period  were  everywhere. 
Many  that  were  printed  no  publisher  would  now  dare 
to  put  in  the  post-office.  Respectable  men  roared 
over  stories  which  the  women  were  not  permitted  to 
hear,  and  they  told  stories  before  the  women  which 
made  them  laugh  and  blush  at  the  same  time.  The 

107 


»• 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

head  of  the  nation  was  one  of  these  humorists.  To 
the  ladies  of  his  acquaintance  he  made  what  they 
called  "mischievous  remarks,"  and  in  a  social  circle 
of  men  he  produced  uproarious  mirth  by  jests  which 
were  often  very  broad.  I  have  found  some  examples 
of  his  humor  which  could  be  quoted  and  others  which 
I  cannot  quote.  He  was  open  to  the  charge  of  oc 
casionally  making  a  pun,  but  many  of  his  contempo 
raries  were  worse  offenders  in  this  particular  than  he 
was.  The  wits  of  Philadelphia  were  having  a  debauch 
of  puns,  which  even  invaded  the  cultured  circle  of 
Dr.  Wistar's  parties.. 

Among  the  characters  whom  the  people  laughed  at 
was  the  Dutchman  of  New  York,  with  his  large,  square 
figure,  great  breadth  of  beam,  and  enormous  coat  and 
trousers  made  from  an  ancient  pattern  which  no  one 
but  himself  had  ever  used.  He  spoke  English  with 
an  accent  of  his  own,  his  nature  was  stolid  and  phleg 
matic,  and  he  adhered  to  the  old  way  of  doing  things 
in  a  land  where  every  one  was  regarded  as  ridiculous 
who  did  not  grasp  at  novelties  and  inventions.  Then 
there  was  the  Pennsylvania  Quaker,  sanctimonious 
and  solemn,  of  measured  speech,  "theeing"  and 
"thouing".  like  a  personified  page  from  the  Bible, 
who  often  gave  pleasant  astonishment  by  exhibiting 
worldly  wisdom  and  effective  repartee  which  were 
quite  out  of  keeping  with  his  joyless  visage.  The 
Irishman  was  a  stock  humorous  character,  amusing 
because  of  his  brogue,  his  sentimental,  unworldly 
nature,  his  reckless  conduct,  and  his  indifference  to 
rules  of  logic,  but  he  was  not  peculiarly  an  American 
possession.  The  two  chief  humorous  figures  who 

108 


THE  SUNSHINE  OF  HUMOR 

were  our  very  own  were  the  Yankee  philosopher  and 
trader  and  the  negro. 

The  humorous  Yankee  was  depicted  as  long-legged, 
sharp- visaged,  blue-eyed,  sandy-haired,  with  a  long 
nose  through  which  he  talked,  wearing  garments  al 
ways  a  little  too  small  for  him,  which  displayed  his 
long  bony  hands  and  wrists  and  large  feet  and  ankles. 
His  manner  was  dry  and  serious,  his  powers  of  ob 
servation  and  penetration  were  extraordinary,  and  he 
expressed  himself  in  original  language.  Often  he  was 
depicted  as  lazy  and  shiftless,  being  in  this  respect 
unlike  his  neighbors.  He  hung  about  in  the  villages 
and  did  odd  jobs,  told  amazing  stories  and  discussed 
theological  subjects.  This  type  was  not  as  widely 
known  as  the  Yankee  trader,  however,  whose  unscru 
pulous  cleverness  in  over-reaching  every  one  with 
whom  he  drove  a  bargain  furnished  a  rich  fund  from 
which  innumerable  anecdotes  were  drawn.  Already 
the  story  of  the  consignment  of  nutmegs  made  of 
walnut  wood,  which  had  been  sent  out  from  Con 
necticut,  was  national  property. 

Much  of  the  sale  of  household  and  personal  super 
fluities  was  by  direct  application  of  the  vender,  and 
to  make  a  sale  he  must  arouse  a  desire  on  the  part 
of  the  purchaser  to  purchase  his  articles.  He  took 
a  long  journey  to  reach  his  customers,  who  lived  far 
apart,  and  to  compensate  himself  for  the  time  con 
sumed  he  placed  the  price  of  his  goods  at  an  im 
measurable  distance  from  the  original  cost.  To  be 
successful  he  must  be  sharp  of  wit,  glib  of  speech, 
and  active  in  his  imagination,  so  he  tried  to  create 
the  good-nature  and  accommodating  spirit  which 

109 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

come  to  one  who  has  been  well  deceived.  By  a  knowl 
edge  of  "soft  sawder"  and  "human  natur'"  he  com 
pelled  women,  and  men,  too,  to  buy.  He  was  both 
a  diplomat  and  an  orator.  Thus,  a  clock-seller  comes 
to  a  farm-house. 

"Just  to  say  good-by,  Mrs.  Flint,"  he  says  to  the 
wife. 

"What,"  says  she,  "have  you  sold  all  your  clocks?" 

"Yes,  and  very  low,  too,  for  money  is  scarce  and 
I  wish  to  close  the  consarn.  No,  I  am  wrong  in  saying 
all,  for  I  have  just  one  left.  Neighbor  Steel's  wife 
asked  to  have  the  refusal  of  it;  but  I  guess  I  won't 
sell  it.  I  had  but  two  of  them — this  one  and  the 
feller  of  it,  that  I  sold  Governor  Lincoln.  General 
Green,  the  Secretary  of  State  of  Maine,  said  he'd 
give  me  fifty  dollars  for  this  one,  but  I  guess  I'll  take 
it  back";  and  so  on,  till  the  woman's  sense  of  rivalry 
and  curiosity  is  so  aroused  that  she  is  determined  to 
have  the  clock.  After  much  persuasion  he  produces 
it  and  places  it  on  the  chimneypiece.  The  husband 
comes  in  and  admires  it,  but  he  has  a  watch  and  does 
not  think  he  needs  a  clock. 

"I  guess  you're  in  the  wrong  furrow  this  time, 
Deacon,"  says  the  clock-seller.  "It  ain't  for  sale, 
and  if  it  was  I  reckon  neighbor  Steel's  wife  would 
have  it,  for  she  gave  me  no  peace  about  it."  He  looks 
at  his  watch.  "Why,  it  ain't  possible!  As  I'm  alive, 
it  is  four  o'clock,  and  if  I  haven't  been  two  hours  here! 
I  tell  you  what,  Mrs.  Flint,  I'll  leave  the  clock  in 
your  care  till  I  return." 

So  he  winds  it  up  and  gives  the  key  to  the  Deacon, 
telling  Mrs.  Flint  to  remind  her  husband  to  wind  it 

no 


THE  SUNSHINE  OF  HUMOR 

every  Saturday  night.  As  he  rides  away  he  remarks 
to  a  companion: 

"That  I  call  human  natur'.  Now  that  clock  is 
sold  for  forty  dollars;  it  cost  me  just  six  dollars  and 
fifty  cents.  Mrs.  Flint  will  never  let  Mrs.  Steel  have 
the  refusal,  nor  will  the  Deacon  learn,  till  I  call  for 
the  clock,  that,  having  once  indulged  in  the  use  of  a 
superfluity,  how  difficult  it  is  to  give  it  up.  We 
can  do  without  any  article  of  luxury  we  have  never 
had,  but  when  once  obtained  it  is  not  in  human  natur' 
to  surrender  it  voluntarily.  We  trust  to  'soft  sawder* 
to  get  them  into  the  house,  and  to  human  natur'  that 
they  never  come  out  of  it." 

The  Yankee  was  put  on  the  stage  almost  as  soon 
as  an  American  drama  was  written,  and  has  done  ser 
vice  in  caricature  on  every  stage  in  the  land.  He  was 
not  as  well  known  in  the  South  as  in  the  North,  but 
he  appeared  there  among  the  country  people  occa 
sionally,  and  always  left  a  reputation  behind  him. 

The  negro  was  a  Southern  product,  but  he  furnished 
humor  for  the  whole  country.  Wherever  he  was  he 
was  laughed  at.  Those  communities  at  the  North 
which  had  only  a  few  of  them  laughed  at  the  few,  and 
they  had  a  monopoly  of  the  humor  of  the  South. 
They  were  the  only  really  merry  people  in  America. 
There  were  many  reasons  for  it.  They  were  by  nature 
irresponsible,  and  in  slavery  they  had  no  responsi 
bility  at  all.  For  them  it  was  to  eat  and  be  merry; 
their  to-morrow  was  the  care  of  others.  Perhaps,  too, 
the  sadness  of  their  hopeless  bondage  caused  them  to 
seek  forgetfulness  of  their  condition  in  the  mirth  of 
the  moment.  Like  many  humorists,  they  went  quickly 

in 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

from  laughter  to  tears.  Until  recently  they  had  lived 
in  an  infant  state  of  society,  in  the  artless  age  when 
human  nature  shoots  "wild  and  free";  when  civili 
zation  has  not  cramped  the  exercise  of  the  fancy  and 
passion.  Wonder  and  surprise  were  more  easily  ex 
cited  in  them  than  they  were  in  a  sophisticated  people. 
They  were  still  close  to  the  time  when  they  had  spoken 
and  acted  in  the  "uncovered  simplicity"  of  nature. 
They  lived  in  a  world  of  imagination  and  passion  and 
were  indifferent  to  truth  and  precision.  They  were 
rude  poets  as  well  as  humorists.  They  personified  do 
mestic  and  wild  animals  and  made  them  talk.  The 
stories  of  Uncle  Remus  are  all  more  than  a  century 
old.  Themselves  childlike  in  nature,  they  had  a  men 
tal  community  with  the  white  children  and  told  them 
stories  of  talking  rabbits,  bears,  and  foxes,  and  of  the 
strange  doings  of  the  creatures  of  the  unseen  world, 
which  the  children  repeated  to  their  parents,  and  thus 
the  folk-lore  was  communicated  by  the  little  ones. 
They  luxuriated  in  superstition,  and  had  a  hundred 
ghosts,  ha'nts,  charms,  fetishes,  and  voodoos  to  the 
white  man's  one.  Their  emotions  found  expression  in 
dancing  and  singing  and  in  loud  oratory.  The  more 
eloquent  among  them  were  preachers,  and  thundered 
forth  discourses  of  amazing  length  which  disclosed 
ludicrous  notions  of  the  personal  interposition  of 
Providence  in  human  affairs.  They  pronounced  Eng 
lish  words  in  a  way  which  was  all  their  own,  and  they 
were  gifted  with  an  interminable  flow  of  language. 
The  negro's  appearance  was  grotesque  and  he  looked 
like  a  great,  good-natured  monkey.  His  sable  skin, 
woolly  hair,  and  enormous  mouth  brought  laughter 

112 


THE  SUNSHINE  OF  HUMOR 

from  all  who  beheld  him.  He  imitated  his  white  mas 
ter  with  delightful  exaggeration.  If  the  master's  man 
ners  were  courtly  the  man's  were  majestic;  if  the 
former  was  dignified  the  latter  was  an  embodiment  of 
pomposity.  When  he  heard  long  words  he  adopted 
them,  adding  some  syllables  to  make  them  longer. 
If  the  tall  collar  was  the  vogue  he  wore  one  that  cov 
ered  his  ears;  if  long  coats  were  in  fashion  he  wore 
tails  that  touched  his  heels.  Like  the  humorous 
Yankee,  he,  too,  was  required  by  the  people  to  be 
represented  on  the  stage  at  an  early  period,  and  so 
popular  was  he  that  later  he  furnished  material  for 
a  full  theatrical  show  under  the  title  of  the  negro 
minstrels.  "Tambo"  and  "Bones,"  the  two  end  men, 
making  music  by  rattling  bones  and  beating  a  tam 
bourine,  bandying  jests  and  quirks,  and  the  pompous 
interlocutor,  usually  addressed  as  "Governor"  or 
"General,"  were  fair  exaggerations  of  negro  characters 
that  might  be  met  with  anywhere. 
8 


XIV 

"RELIGION,  OR  THE  DUTY  WE  OWE  TO  OUR  CREATOR  " 

"AS  the  government  of  the  United  States  is  not 
,/\  in  any  sense  founded  on  the  Christian  religion," 
were  the  words  with  which  one  of  the  articles  in  the 
treaty  between  the  United  States  and  Tripoli,  signed 
in  1796,  began.  Washington  was  the  President  at 
the  time,  Timothy  Pickering,  of  Massachusetts,  the 
Secretary  of  State,  and  Joel  Barlow,  of  Connecticut, 
the  agent  who  negotiated  the  treaty.  It  was  agreed 
to  by  the  Senate  without  objection,  so  far  as  history 
records.  During  Washington's  administration  he  is 
sued  two  proclamations,  being  recommended  to  do 
so  by  Congress,  calling  upon  the  people  to  give  thanks 
to  God  for  their  blessings  and  to  pray  for  remission 
of  their  sins.  In  the  first  one,  dated  October  3,  1789, 
seven  months  after  the  new  government  had  been  in 
operation,  he  enumerated  the  "civil  and  religious 
liberty"  which  the  people  enjoyed  as  one  cause  for 
thanks,  and  advised  them  to  supplicate  "that  great 
and  glorious  Being  who  is  the  beneficent  author  of 
all  the  good  that  was,  that  is,  or  that  will  be."  In 
the  second  proclamation,  January  i,  1795,  drafted  by 
Alexander  Hamilton,  he  advised  that  thanks  be  given 
to  "the  Great  Ruler  of  Nations."  He  purposely 
worded  both  proclamations  so  that  they  would  be 

114 


"RELIGION" 

acceptable  to  all  who  believed  in  a  God.  John  Adams 
was  not  so  generous.  His  proclamation  of  March  23, 
1798,  appointing  a  day  of  public  fasting,  humiliation, 
and  prayer,  recommended  the  people  to  implore  the 
mercy  of  God  " through  the  Redeemer  of  the  World," 
and  he  repeated  the  recognition  of  the  Saviour  in 
another  proclamation  a  year  later.  Jefferson  issued  no 
proclamation  of  the  character  we  are  discussing,  but 
Madison  was  called  upon  by  Congress  to  issue  one 
of  thanks  for  the  peace  with  England;  and,  although 
he  was  urged  by  many  people  to  make  it  a  Christian 
document,  he  followed  Washington's  example,  and 
worded  it  so  that  a  non-Christian  could  accept  it. 
After  his  retirement  from  office  he  expressed  the 
opinion  that  Congress  had  erred  in  employing-at  pub 
lic  expense  chaplains  to  open  the  sittings  with  prayer. 
He  said  the  chaplains  must  be  members  of  some  re 
ligious  sect  which  was  obnoxious  to  Catholics  and 
Quakers,  of  whom  there  were  always  a  few  in  Congress. 
The  event  proved  that  he  misjudged,  however,  for 
in  1832  Charles  Constantine  Pise,  a  Catholic  priest, 
was  chosen  to  be  chaplain  of  the  Senate. 

But  there  was  really  no  connection  between  the 
national  government  and  religion,  complete  separa 
tion  having  been  required  by  the  fundamental  law. 
Because  he  believed  them  to  be  an  encroachment 
upon  the  spirit  of  that  law,  the  President  vetoed  two 
bills  in  1 8 1 1 ,  one  to  incorporate  an  Episcopal  Church 
in  Alexandria,  then  a  part  of  the  District  of  Columbia, 
the  other  reserving  a  piece  of  public  land  in  Mississippi 
Territory  for  a  Baptist  church. 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  the  separ- 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

ation  of  church  and  state  meant  that  the  people  and 
their  leaders  were  irreligious.  On  the  contrary,  some, 
at  least,  of  the  leaders  in  the  cause  of  religious  freedom 
intended  the  separation  to  be  an  exaltation  of  re 
ligion  into  a  thing  above  and  beyond  the  reach  of 
government.  This  was  the  President's  position.  The 
Virginia  Bill  of  Rights,  which  may  be  said  to  have  been 
the  pioneer  declaration  on  the  subject,  had  said : 

That  religion  or  the  duty  we  owe  to  our  Creator,  and  the 
manner  of  discharging  it,  can  be  directed  only  by  reason  and  con 
viction,  not  by  force  or  violence,  and  therefore  all  men  are  equally 
entitled  to  the  free  exercise  of  religion  according  to  the  dictates 
of  conscience. 

This  clause  was  phrased  so  as  to  avoid  the  use  of  the 
word  "toleration,"  and  was  the  result  of  an  amend 
ment  offered  by  Madison,  when  a  very  young  man 
fresh  from  Princeton  College,  intensely  religious  and 
suspected  of  an  intention  of  going  into  the  ministry. 
The  argument  used  for  the  clause  was  the  same  that 
Mirabeau  advanced  twenty  years  later: 

The  most  unlimited  liberty  of  religion  is  in  my  eyes  a  right 
so  sacred  that  to  express  it  by  the  word  "toleration'*  seems  to 
me  itself  a  sort  of  tyranny,  since  the  authority  which  tolerates 
may  also  not  tolerate. 

Furthermore,  the  fathers  of  the  Republic  believed 
that  religion  and  morality  were  welded  together,  and 
that  national  virtue  could  not  exist  without  religious 
faith.  They  were  in  full  accord  with  Washington's 
declaration  in  the  Farewell  Address: 

Whatever  may  be  conceded  to  the  influence  of  refined  edu 
cation  on  minds  of  peculiar  structure,  reason  and  experience 
both  forbid  us  to  expect  that  national  morality  can  prevail  in 
exclusion  of  religious  principles. 

116 


"  RELIGION  " 

In  1815  the  United  States  was  the  only  country 
in  the  world  which  did  not  have  an  official  religion. 
Religious  toleration  was  general  throughout  Europe; 
individuals  could  hold  such  views  as  they  preferred 
and  attend  any  or  no  church,  but  they  did  so  by  per 
mission  and  not  by  right. 

When  we  examine  this  country  in  detail  we  find 
that  not  all  the  states  were  as  liberal  as  the  national 
government  was.  The  conviction  that  virtue  came 
from  religion  made  many  people  think  that  the  state 
must  support  the  one  to  obtain  the  other.  The  Con 
stitution  of  Massachusetts  said: 

As  the  happiness  of  a  people  and  the  good  order  and  preser 
vation  of  civil  government  essentially  depend  upon  piety,  reli 
gion,  and  morality,  and  as  these  cannot  be  generally  diffused 
through  a  community  but  by  the  institution  of  the  public  worship 
of  God  and  of  public  instruction  in  piety,  religion,  and  morality — 

therefore  the  legislature  must  require  the  people  to 
make  suitable  provision  for  public  worship  and  "the 
support  of  public  Protestant  teachers  of  piety,  religion, 
and  morality."  New  Hampshire  said  that  morality 
and  piety,  "grounded  on  evangelical  principles,"  were 
the  best  security  to  good  government,  and  that  to 
have  them  taught  the  legislature  must  see  that  pro 
vision  was  made  for  "public  Protestant  teachers." 
Massachusetts  and  New  Hampshire  had,  in  effect,  a 
Church  establishment.  So  had  Connecticut;  and 
it  made  a  constitution  in  1818  which  proclaimed  the 
right  of  freedom  of  worship,  but  allowed  taxation 
for  support  of  the  churches.  Vermont  had  an  ex 
pression  in  favor  of  revealed  religion.  The  Maryland 
Declaration  of  Rights  allowed  the  legislature  "to  lay 

117 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

a  general  and  equal  tax  for  the  support  of  the  Christian 
religion";  New  Jersey  said  that  ''all  persons  pro 
fessing  a  belief  in  the  faith  of  any  Protestant  sect" 
should  be  eligible  to  office;  North  Carolina  that  no 
person  who  should  "deny  the  being  of  God  or  the 
truth  of  the  Protestant  religion  or  the  divine  authority 
either  of  the  Old  or  New  Testament"  should  be  capa 
ble  of  holding  any  office  or  place  of  trust  or  profit 
in  the  civil  department  of  the  state.  Rhode  Island 
had  religious  freedom  only  for  Christians.  Tennessee 
said:  "No  person  who  denies  the  being  of  God,  or 
a  future  state  of  rewards  and  punishment,  shall  hold 
any  office  in  the  civil  department  of  this  state." 
Pennsylvania  put  the  atheists  beyond  the  pale :  ' '  Nor 
can  any  man  who  acknowledges  the  being  of  a  God 
be  justly  deprived  or  abridged  of  any  civil  right,"  etc. 
Complete  freedom  of  conscience  existed  only  in  New 
York,  Delaware,  Virginia,  Kentucky,  Georgia,  and 
Louisiana. 

There  were  very  few  people  who  would  have  been 
affected  injuriously  by  the  discriminatory  laws,  even 
if  they  had  been  enforced,  and  they  were  not  enforced. 
Belief  in  the  divine  origin  of  the  Bible,  in  the  miracu 
lous  creation  of  the  world,  in  heaven  and  hell  as  places, 
in  creationism,  or  that  all  living  things,  and  especially 
man,  were  made  substantially  as  they  then  existed, 
was  well-nigh  universal.  Evolution,  or  the  doctrine 
of  derivation,  was  unknown.  A  few  people  still  read 
the  writings  of  the  skeptics — of  Voltaire  and  others 
of  the  French  school,  of  Hume,  of  Kant;  but  the  one 
most  read  was  Tom  Paine.  The  Age  of  Reason  came 
to  America  by  way  of  Paris,  however,  and  was  one 

118 


"RELIGION" 

of  the  products  of  the  French  Revolution,  so  its  in 
fluence  declined  as  the  people  became  disillusionized 
with  respect  to  that  upheaval.  The  basis  of  Paine's 
attack  on  Christianity  was  its  improbability,  the 
similarity  to  pagan  mythology,  and  the  inconclusive 
proof  of  it;  and  this  was  the  basis  of  attack  by  the 
other  writers.  Orthodoxy  was  as  yet  assailed  only 
by  philosophy,  ridicule,  and  logic;  it  had  received 
no  serious  wounds  from  scientific  discoveries.  That 
the  earth  was  not  the  center  of  the  universe  was 
known;  but  geology  had  not  yet  revealed  its  slow 
formation.  Darwin  and  his  theories  did  not  come 
till  fifty  years  later. 

Yet  immediately  after  the  Revolution  there  had 
been  much  infidelity  in  the  country.  Seven  years  of 
war  had  impoverished  the  churches  and  a  great  many 
of  them  had  been  destroyed.  The  Episcopal  Church, 
the  oldest  and  the  strongest  before  the  Revolution, 
was  almost  wiped  out  of  existence  by  the  war.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  clergymen  were  loyalists  and  had  fled. 
It  had  been  the  state  Church  and  fell  to  pieces  when 
state  support  was  withdrawn.  The  budding  Methodist 
Church  had  depended  for  existence  on  John  Wesley, 
an  Englishman,  who  opposed  the  patriot  cause,  and 
many  of  the  ministers  had  returned  to  British  juris 
diction.  The  other  churches  might  more  easily  adjust 
themselves  to  changed  conditions,  but  before  the  re 
adjustment  came  the  wave  of  infidelity  swept  over 
the  land.  It  came  from  France  as  a  part  of  the  affec 
tation  of  French  things  and  opinions  which  resulted 
from  the  alliance,  and  from  the  French  Revolution, 
which  Americans  thought  was  an  imitation  of  their 

119 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

own.  But  the  French  influence  was  artificial  and  soon 
passed;  with  it  went  the  infidelity,  and  religion  was 
enthroned  again. 

America  was  naturally  its  kingdom  and  the  Amer 
icans  were  naturally  its  subjects.  They  came  of  re 
ligious  stock.  Back  of  many  of  them  was  the  fact, 
in  which  they  took  great  pride,  that  their  fathers  had 
settled  in  the  land  for  religious  reasons.  While  they 
were  not,  when  compared  with  Latins,  an  emotional 
people,  they  were,  nevertheless,  strongly  sentimen 
tal.  Everybody  who  could  read  read  poetry.  It 
was  a  necessary  mode  of  expression  to  them.  They 
were  dwellers  in  the  country  surrounded  by  phenom 
ena  of  nature  which  they  could  not  explain  by  nat 
ural  causes.  Scholars  cultivating  their  intellects  and 
killing  their  natural  craving  for  religion  were  few  and 
had  little  influence. 

Religion  came  to  its  own  through  a  series  of  re 
vivals,  close  following  upon  one  another  and  extend 
ing  over  the  whole  country.  They  began  in  Vir 
ginia  in  1785,  and  lasted  six  or  seven  years  in  that 
state  and  the  neighboring  states.  They  appeared 
in  New  England  in  1791  and  became  a  characteristic 
feature  of  Congregational  life.  What  was  known  as 
"The  Great  Revival"  began  in  1801  on  the  frontier 
in  Kentucky,  and  swept  northward,  carrying  thou 
sands  of  people  into  the  churches.  The  revival  meet 
ings  were  so  large  that  no  building  could  hold  the 
people,  so  they  gathered  in  the  open.  Often  a  meeting 
lasted  several  days  and  they  camped  out,  so  the  meet 
ings  became  "camp  meetings."  All  the  Protestant 
churches  profited  by  the  revivals,  but  the  Methodists 

120 


"RELIGION" 

and  Baptists  profited  the  most,  and  then  began  their 
great  career  as  popular  churches.  The  Methodist 
traveling  preachers  reached  the  residents  of  remote 
districts.  The  vigorous  style  of  preaching  which  they 
practised,  and  the  fact  that  they  were  not  usually 
better  dressed  or  better  educated  than  the  average 
people  in  their  audiences,  made  them  popular  with 
the  masses,  and  the  membership  grew  rapidly.  From 
the  time  that  the  first  Methodist  preaching-house  was 
erected  there  had  been  negroes  in  the  Church,  and  in 
1 80 1  Zion  Church,  the  first  church  exclusively  for  col 
ored  people,  was  erected  in  New  York.  By  1815  it 
was  the  most  popular  sect  with  them,  dividing  only 
with  the  Baptists. 

That  sect  had  already  risen  to  a  large  vmembership. 
Starting  in  Rhode  Island,  it  had  gone  through  the 
Middle  States  and  found  a  rich  field  in  the  South  when 
the  Episcopal  Church  was  in  a  state  of  depression. 
It  was  the  Church  of  the  missionary  and  pioneer  and 
went  West  with  the  earliest  settlements.  In  1812  it 
claimed  a  membership  of  nearly  18,000  in  New  York, 
of  35,000  in  Virginia,  of  13,000  in  North  Carolina, 
and  about  as  many  in  South  Carolina  and  Georgia, 
of  10,000  in  Tennessee,  and  17,000  in  Kentucky. 
Probably  it  was  the  most  populous  sect  in  the  whole 
country. 

The  Episcopal  Church  after  a  painful  effort  at  re 
suscitation  had  at  length  established  an  American 
system  of  government,  and  in  1814  had  a  notable 
infusion  of  energy.  New  bishops  were  consecrated, 
many  clergymen  were  ordained,  old  churches,  long 
abandoned,  were  reopened,  and  the  Church,  as  it 

121 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

stands  to-day  was  put  upon  its  feet.  Outside  of  New 
England  it  was  the  Church  of  the  intellectual  and  the 
well-born. 

The  Presbyterians  had  not  suffered  from  English 
affiliations  as  the  Episcopalians  and  Methodists  had, 
but  they  derived  fewer  accessions  from  the  Great  Re 
vival  'than  the  Baptists  and  Methodists  did.  They 
discouraged  the  hysterical,  violent  methods  which 
characterized  many  revival  meetings,  and  their  cler 
gymen  were  usually  men  of  liberal  education  and 
not  in  complete  sympathy  with  an  ignorant  crowd. 
Nevertheless,  the  Church  had  a  normal  growth  and 
by  1815  numbered  at  least  30,000  members.  Wher 
ever  the  inhabitants  were  of  Scotch-Irish  origin  there 
were  Presbyterians. 

The  great  Catholic  denomination,  now  the  largest 
of  all,  was  then  hardly  as  large  as  the  Presbyterian.  It 
had  begun  actively  as  an  American  institution  in  1790 
under  the  bishopric  of  John  Carroll,  and  when  he  died 
in  1815  there  were  Catholic  schools,  convents,  and  col 
leges,  a  Catholic  press,  and  at  least  one  hundred  priests. 

The  impulse  to  its  progress  came  from  a  patriotic 
American,  a  member  of  a  family  noted  for  its  service 
to  the  state.  It  was  in  religion  as  it  was  in  every 
other  institution — it  progressed  only  when  it  joined  the 
ranks  that  were  marching  on  to  the  new  nationality. 

The  preponderating  Church  in  New  England  was 
the  Congregational,  and  as  it  differed  from  the  Pres 
byterian  only  in  the  matter  of  Church  government, 
the  two  often  acted  together.  Already  Unitarianism 
had  arisen  in  the  Congregational  Church  in  Boston 
and  the  battle  between  them  was  raging;  but  the 

122 


"RELIGIONS 

separation  had  not  yet  been  effected  and  the  Uni 
tarians  outside  of  Boston  were  very  few. 

The  Jews  were  a  mere  handful,  probably  not  5,000 
in  the  whole  country,  grouped  in  several  seaboard 
cities — Newport,  New  York,  Charleston,  Savannah, 
New  Orleans,  and  Philadelphia. 

Taking  the  religions  geographically,  the  popula 
tion  of  New  England  was  overwhelmingly  Congre 
gational;  in  New  York  were  many  members  of  the 
Dutch  Reformed  Church  and  Episcopalians ;  in  Penn 
sylvania  and  New  Jersey,  Lutherans,  Quakers,  Mora 
vians,  and  Episcopalians ;  in  the  Middle  States  and  the 
South,  Baptists,  Methodists,  and  Episcopalians ;  in  the 
West,MethodistsandBaptists.  In  Mary  land  were  many 
Catholics,  and  they  had  a  preponderance  in  Louisiana. 

The  prevalence  of  religion  was  general.  It  is  true 
that  the  Indians  were  slow  to  yield  to  the  Christian 
missionaries,  having,  in  fact,  a  religion  of  their  own, 
with  a  belief  in  a  Supreme  Being  and  a  future  state; 
but  the  negroes  were  all  Christians. 

They  had  been  brought  to  America  with  the  re 
ligion  of  their  race,  were  worshipers  of  idols  and 
fetishes,  believers  in  charms  and  witchcraft;  but 
under  the  white  masters'  orders  they  discarded  their 
idols  and  knelt  at  the  same  altar  with  their  masters. 
They  never  gave  up  their  belief  in  charms  and  witches; 
but  they  became  Christians  almost  as  soon  as  they 
touched  Christian  shores. 

Al1  of  the  various  sects  in  the  country  held  it  to 
be  their  mission  to  educate  youth  for  admission  to 
the  ministry,  and  from  this  conviction  came  the  col 
leges  of  the  country. 

123 


XV 
WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

ANEW  country,  the  population  scattered  over 
a  great  expanse,  engaged  in  the  work  of  con 
quering  nature,  working,  under  a  popular  government, 
steadily  toward  the  glorification  of  the  common  man, 
is  not  the  place  where  one  should  expect  to  find  full 
cultivation  of  the  higher  intellectual  qualities.  The 
necessities  are  encouraging  to  action  and  antagonistic 
to  study.  Benjamin  Franklin  said  it  in  the  Pennsyl 
vania  Gazette,  August  24,  1749,  when  he  urged  higher 
education  upon  the  colony  of  Pennsylvania: 

In  the  settling  of  new  countries  the  first  care  of  the  planters 
must  be  to  provide  and  secure  the  necessaries  of  life;  this  en 
grosses  their  attention  and  affords  them  little  time  to  think  of 
anything  farther.  .  .  .  Agriculture  and  mechanic  arts  were  of  the 
most  immediate  importance;  the  culture  of  minds  by  the  finer 
arts  and  sciences  was  necessarily  postponed  to  times  of  more 
wealth  and  leisure. 

The  ideals  of  the  people  formed  accordingly.  They 
were  in  the  fighting  stage,  and  their  greatest  admir 
ation  was  for  fighting  men.  There  was  a  man  rising 
in  the  new  Southwest  who  realized  their  ideals. 

They  had  demanded  that  the  war  should  produce  a 
hero  who  should  overtop  all  others,  and  they  made 
one  out  of  Andrew  Jackson,  a  man  who  undoubtedly 

124 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

had  many  heroic  qualities.  Popular  at  the  close  of 
the  war,  his  popularity  grew  steadily  and  became 
overwhelming.  The  common  people  admired  him 
and  chose  him  for  their  champion,  and  he  was  a  man 
to  be  admired.  His  intellect  was  strong,  even  though 
it  was  narrow  and  uncultivated;  he  was  of  perfect 
integrity,  of  glowing  patriotism,  and  of  chivalrous 
nature.  He  was  deep  in  prejudices,  but  he  was  ab 
solutely  free  from  class  prejudice.  Prince  and  pauper, 
learned  man  and  ignorant,  were  all  equal  in  his  eyes. 
Philanthropy  and  courage  shone  out  from  his  presence, 
and  wherever  he  went  men  turned  to  look  at  him  and 
felt  that  he  was  not  an  ordinary  man.  In  fact,  the 
people's  champion  was  a  true  knight,  even  though 
he  wielded  a  fence  rail  instead  of  a  shining  lance, 
and  the  deadly  twenty  paces  of  a  sylvan  retreat  took 
the  place  of  the  crowded  lists.  His  Rowena,  who  sat 
trembling  at  home,  waiting  to  know  the  chance  re 
sult  of  a  pistol-shot,  was  a  faded  woman  of  the  fron 
tier,  who  could  quote  no  poetry  beyond  a  few  Metho 
dist  hymns;  yet  more  romance  had  been  crowded 
into  her  life  than  any  of  Sir  Walter's  heroines  ever 
knew.  Alas!  the  Waverley  novels  were  coming  out 
at  this  very  time  and  she  never  read  a  line  of  them. 
Andrew  Jackson  was  not  a  well-educated  man  and 
his  wife  was  hardly  educated  at  all.  He  had  been  to 
an  "old  field"  school  in  North  Carolina  for  a  few 
years — a  rough  institution  where  the  rudiments  were 
taught  by  an  ignorant  teacher.  He  learned  to  express 
himself  well,  but  he  spelled  as  he  chose  and  his  gram 
mar  was  bad.  Of  science,  the  classics,  literature,  he 
knew  nothing.  Here  was  the  man  who  represented 

125 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

the  new  order;  here  was  the  man  who  was  the  ex 
ponent  of  the  masses  of  the  people  and  whom  they 
loved  as  they  have  loved  no  other  President.  Through 
him  they  took  over  the  government  which  up  to  this 
time  they  had  intrusted  to  gentlemen  and  scholars. 
With  praiseworthy  self-restraint  they  allowed  the  old 
order  to  pass  without  violent  expulsion.  In  1815  the 
profoundest  scholar  of  government  in  America  was 
the  President.  He  had  succeeded  a  man  of  whom  it 
is  hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say,  as  Ferdinand  Lassalle 
once  said  of  himself,  that  he  was  armed  with  all  the 
culture  of  his  century.  Madison's  successor  was  a 
graduate  of  William  and  Mary  College,  and  Monroe's 
successor  had  studied  in  Paris  and  Holland  before 
he  graduated  from  Harvard.  The  choice  of  these  men 
for  the  Presidency  showed  how  forceful  was  the  habit 
which  had  come  from  England,  of  conferring  high 
public  offices  upon  college-bred  men.  It  was  inevi 
table,  however,  that  it  should  give  way  before  the 
growing  consciousness  of  power  of  a  people  whose 
surroundings  were  not  of  a  kind  to  make  the  scholar 
their  favorite  type. 

Nevertheless,  there  had  been  an  earnest  effort  from 
the  earliest  settlement  of  the  country  to  establish  in 
stitutions  of  higher  education.  It  had  been  fostered 
here,  as  it  has  been  fostered  from  the  earliest  times 
in  all  lands,  by  religion,  by  government,  and  by  pri 
vate  philanthropy;  and  the  educational  system  went, 
as  it  has  always  done,  from  the  top  downward.  There 
were  colleges  before  there  were  academies,  and  acad 
emies  before  there  were  common  schools,  and  the 
Church,  the  state  and  the  rich  man  gave  their  at- 

126 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

tention  to  the  first  before  they  gave  it  to  the 
last. 

In  1638  John  Harvard,  a  rich  Congregational  min 
ister,  left  £800  to  the  newly  established  state  college  at 
Cambridge,  and  it  was  given  his  name.  In  1691  Com 
missary  James  Blair  asked  Queen  Mary  for  a  charter 
for  a  college  in  Virginia  where  young  men  could  be 
prepared  for  the  ministry,  and  subscriptions  were  suc 
cessfully  solicited  from  rich  and  influential  persons. 
The  college  was  erected  near  the  Episcopal  church 
at  Williamsburg  and  became  the  College  of  William 
and  Mary.  When  the  state  of  Virginia  gave  George 
Washington  certain  shares  in  the  James  River  and 
Potomac  River  companies,  he  transferred  part  of 
them  to  the  Washington  Academy  (now  the  Wash 
ington  and  Lee  University)  at  Lexington,  Virginia, 
and  left  the  rest  in  trust  for  the  benefit  of  a  national 
university  when  it  should  be  established.  He  never 
seems  to  have  thought  of  giving  the  stock  to  en 
courage  popular  education.  Thomas  Jefferson,  after 
much  study  of  the  schools  of  Europe,  thought  out 
the  most  scientific  and  far-reaching  scheme  of  state 
education  that  had  thus  far  been  elaborated  in 
America.  The  capstone  of  the  structure  was  to  be 
the  university.  He  enlarged  the  Albemarle  Acad 
emy  into  Central  College  in  1816,  and  it  became  the 
University  of  Virginia  in  1819,  but  he  had  been  dead 
[or  forty  years  before  the  state  established  a  common- 
school  system.  It  is  true  that  there  were  many  com 
mon  schools  in  the  country  from  the  earliest  times,  but 
the  main  interest  was  in  the  higher  institutions. 

Harvard  had  recently  become  a  Unitarian  College; 

127 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Yale,  founded  in  1699,  and  Dartmouth,  founded  in 
1769,  were  Congregational.  Col.  Ephraim  Williams 
made  a  bequest  for  educational  purposes  in  1755,  and 
with  the  aid  of  the  state  Williams  College  was  estab 
lished  at  Williamstown,  Massachusetts,  in  1793.  It 
was  not  an  ecclesiastical  college,  but  it  soon  became 
a  breeding-place  for  missionaries  of  the  Congrega 
tional  Church.  King's  College,  afterward  Columbia, 
in  New  York,  and  the  University  of  Pennsylvania 
received  royal  charters  in  1754,  and  were,  of  course, 
under  the  control  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  In  South 
Carolina  the  state  established  a  college  at  Columbia 
which  opened  its  doors  in  1805.  It  was  not  sectarian, 
but  the  president  was  an  Episcopal  clergyman.  The 
Presbyterians  had  the  College  of  New  Jersey  at  Prince 
ton.  It  was  powerful  in  the  Middle  States,  was  the 
parent  of  higher  education  in  North  Carolina,  and  the 
several  Presbyterian  colleges  in  Virginia  owed  their 
beginning  to  Princeton  men.  The  Baptists  had 
founded  Brown  University  at  Providence,  Rhode 
Island,  in  1764.  The  Catholics  had  several  good 
academies,  and  the  college  at  Georgetown  had  been 
opened  in  1791.  Naturally,  the  last  sect  to  make  an 
effort  in  the  direction  of  higher  education  was  the 
most  popular  with  the  'common  people,  and  it  was 
not  till  1829  that  the  Methodist  Church  founded 
Randolph-Macon  College  at  Ashland  in  Virginia.  It 
should  be  remarked,  however,  that  while  nearly  all 
the  colleges  had  their  origin  in  the  needs  of  the 
churches,  they  were  not  sectarian  in  their  member 
ship,  and  no  student  was  barred  from  attending  a 
college  because  he  did  not  belong  to  the  religious  sect 

128 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

which  controlled  it.  The  form  of  organization  of  the 
colleges  was  copied  from  that  of  Cambridge  Univer 
sity,  England.  The  prescribed  course  was  four  years. 
The  degree  conferred  was  Bachelor  of  Arts.  When 
the  University  of  Virginia  was  opened  it  provided  for 
an  elective  course  of  study,  and  already  some  choice 
was  allowed  at  William  and  Mary;  but  in  the  other 
colleges  all  the  scholars  followed  the  same  course. 
This  included  Latin,  Greek,  English  literature,  and 
rhetoric,  mathematics,  physics,  chemistry,  a  little 
logic,  psychology  and  metaphysics,  political  economy, 
a  little  history,  and  sometimes  a  smattering  of  German 
and  French.  In  none  of  these  studies  was  the  course 
an  advanced  one,  except  in  Latin  and  Greek.  Boys 
entered  college  at  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age,  the 
average  graduating  age  being  twenty.  There  were 
no  graduates'  schools;  but  at  the  larger  colleges  it 
was  common  to  find  a  few  students  who  remained 
after  graduation  for  a  year's  extra  study  of  some 
special  subject.  After  all,  only  a  small  proportion 
of  the  people  goes  to  college,  and  it  was  a  very  small 
proportion  in  1815.  In  that  year  23  students  grad 
uated  from  Williams,  66  from  Harvard,  69  from 
Yale,  40  from  Princeton,  15  from  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  and  37  from  the  University  of  South 
Carolina. 

Of  professional  schools  there  were  few,  and  youths 
who  wished  to  become  clergymen,  lawyers,  or  physi 
cians  studied  under  older  members  of  these  professions. 
There  were  a  few  divinity  schools,  however — one  for 
the  Dutch  Reformed  Church  at  New  York,  estab 
lished  in  1784,  which  was  the  oldest;  St.  Mary's 
9  129 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Academy  at  Baltimore  for  students  for  the  Catholic 
priesthood,  established  in  1791 ;  one  for  Presbyterians 
at  Service,  Pennsylvania  (now  at  Chambersburg),  es 
tablished  in  1794;  the  Andover  Seminary  at  Andover, 
Massachusetts,  established  by  the  Congregationalists 
in  1778.  The  Princeton  Theological  Seminary  began 
in  1812.  There  was  no  Episcopal  seminary  until  one 
was  established  at  New  York  in  1819,  and  none  for 
the  Baptists  till  that  at  Hamilton,  New  York,  was 
opened  in  1 8 1 7 .  Any  student  might  become  grounded 
in  theology,  however,  "at  the  colleges,  where  it  was 
part  of  the  course,  where  the  Bible  was  taught  and 
the  New  Testament  read  in  Greek. 

The  medical  schools  were  multiplying.  There  had 
been  one  in  Philadelphia  since  1745,  and  in  New  York 
since  1750.  The  former  became  a  part  of  the  Univer 
sity  of  Pennsylvania  in  1791;  the  latter  the  Medical 
Department  of  King's  College  in  1767  and  the  College 
of  Physicians  and  Surgeons  in  1813.  Harvard  (1782), 
Dartmouth  (1781),  the  University  of  Maryland  at 
Baltimore  (1807),  Yale  (1813) — all  had  medical  schools 
of  good  standing,  that  at  Philadelphia  being  esteemed 
the  best.  Until  1813  it  was  the  custom  to  confer  the 
degree  of  Bachelor  of  Medicine  first,  and  after  a  year 
more  of  study  the  Doctor's  degree.  Commonly,  the 
course  comprised  two  sessions  of  four  or  five  months 
each.  Notwithstanding  the  increase  in  the  members 
of  schools,  not  one  practising  physician  in  ten  had 
ever  taken  a  degree,  nearly  all  of  them  having  been 
educated  in  medicine  in  doctors'  offices. 

The  young  lawyers,  too,  came  through  the  offices 
of  older  lawyers.  There  was  only  one  law-school, 

130 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

that  of  Tapping  Reeve  and  Judge  James  Gould  at 
Litchfield,  Conn.  In  had  developed  from  an  increase 
in  the  number  of  law  students  in  Reeve's  office.  The 
course  was  fifteen  months.  In  1817  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania  and  Harvard  established  law-schools. 
There  were  no  technical  schools  except  the  Military 
Academy  at  West  Point,  which  had  been  established 
in  1802.  It  was  the  only  institution  where  engineering 
was  taught.  There  was  no  Naval  Academy  till  1845. 
The  boy  who  wanted  to  become  a  naval  officer  sailed 
on  a  merchantman  or  as  a  midshipman  on  a  man-of- 
war.  He  entered  upon  his  career  when  he  was  a  mere 
child,  sometimes  when  he  was  nine  years  old. 

To  prepare  for  college  many  boys  of  the  opulent 
class,  especially  in  the  South,  received  instruction 
from  a  family  tutor — usually  a  young  scholar  who 
filled  in  a  year  or  two  after  graduating  from  college 
by  teaching  before  entering  upon  a  profession.  He 
was  treated  as  a  member  of  the  family  who  employed 
him,  and  taught  all  the  children  who  were  old  enough 
to  leave  the  nursery.  Frequently  the  parents  taught 
their  own  children,  however,  and  this  was  one  of  the 
causes  of  the  strong  family  cohesion  which  was  a 
characteristic  of  the  time. 

The  greater  number  of  boys  and  girls  who  received 
any  education  beyond  the  elementary  obtained  it  at 
the  grammar-schools  or  academies,  where  the  studies 
for  boys  were  generally  regulated  by  the  requirements 
of  the  colleges.  There  were  some  265  of  these  insti 
tutions  scattered  through  the  country,  and  new  ones 
were  constantly  springing  up.  A  boy  might  enter 
when  he  was  nine  and  remain  four  or  five  years.  He 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

underwent  a  classical  course,  usually  with  very  little 
of  science;  but  the  academies  differed  greatly  from 
one  another  in  many  respects,  and  reflected  the  in 
dividual  views  of  the  principals,  who  were  nearly  al 
ways  the  proprietors.  Two  illustrations  will  suffice  to 
demonstrate  this.  Rev.  Moses  Waddell,  a  Presby 
terian  minister,  had  an  academy  at  Willington, 
South  Carolina,  near  the  Georgia  border,  which  was 
probably  the  most  famous  school  in  that  part  of  the 
country.  The  recitation-hall  was  a  log  cabin,  and 
situated  near  it  were  smaller  log  cabins  where  the  boys 
lived.  Every  morning  Dr.  Waddell  would  come  to 
the  door  of  the  recitation-building  and  blow  a  horn, 
when  the  boys  would  gather  for  prayers.  When  they 
were  not  reciting  they  studied  their  lessons  in  groups 
out  of  doors  under  the  trees.  If  the  weather  was  cold 
they  built  fires  and  sat  around  them.  Waddell  suc 
ceeded  in  exciting  emulation  among  his  scholars,  and 
his  graduates  pronounced  him  an  incomparable  teach 
er.  His  course  was  classical,  and  the  discipline  ap 
pears  to  have  been  of  the  easiest.  Of  different  char 
acter  was  the  "American  Military,  Scientific,  and 
Literary  Academy"  which  Captain  Alden  Partridge 
started  at  Norwich,  Vermont,  in  1820,  whence  he 
moved  to  Middletown,  Connecticut,  and  then  back 
to  Norwich,  where  in  1835  his  school  became  the  Nor 
wich  University.  He  had  well-planned  buildings,  and 
those  at  Middletown  served  for  Wesleyan  University 
when  it  began  in  1831.  The  boys  wore  uniforms,  mil 
itary  discipline  was  enforced,  the  course  was  chiefly 
scientific  and  mathematical,  and  modern  languages, 
especially  French,  were  taught.  He  took  his  boys  on 

132 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

long  excursions  to  historic  points,  and  once  they  went 
all  the  way  to  Washington  by  steamboat  and  on  foot, 
and  met  President  John  Quincy  Adams.  The  hours 
for  meals,  study,  and  recitation  were  those  which 
prevailed  in  most  academies.  Breakfast  was  at  seven 
o'clock  in  winter  and  a  quarter  before  seven  in  sum 
mer;  dinner  was  at  one;  supper  at  sunset.  Study 
and  recitations  began  at  eight  in  summer  and  nine 
in  winter,  and  lasted  till  one;  were  resumed  at  two 
and  ceased  at  four.  From  four  to  five  there  was 
recreation;  from  five  till  sunset,  study;  and  in  the 
evening,  study  and  private  lectures  till  ten  o'clock, 
when  everybody  must  be  in  bed.  The  day  began  with 
prayer,  and  on  Sunday  each  cadet  must  remain  in  his 
room,  except  when  he  was  at  divine  service.  The  va 
cation  was  for  six  weeks,  beginning  with  the  first 
Monday  in  December.  The  expense  was  about  $275 
per  annum  for  each  boy,  which  was  more  than  the 
cost  at  most  academies.  Some  of  the  academies  were 
endowed  and  some  had  state  assistance,  but  very 
few  were  free.  There  were  no  high-schools  till  one 
at  Boston  was  started  in  1821.  There  were  no  co 
educational  academies.  The  Bradford  Academy  in 
the  Merrimac  Valley,  founded  in  1803,  was  intended 
for  boys  and  girls,  but  after  a  short  time  it  became  a 
girls'  school.  The  higher  classes  studied  Morse's 
Geography,  Murray's  English  Grammar,  Pope's  Essay 
on  Man,  Blair's  Rhetoric,  and  the  Bible — a  course 
which  it  would  be  hard  to  improve  upon.  They  were 
taught  embroidering  and  other  accomplishments  with 
the  needle.  The  movement  for  giving  a  girl  the  same 
education  as  a  boy  was  about  to  begin,  however.  In 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

1818  Rev.  Joseph  Emerson  opened  his  Girls'  Seminary 
at  Byfield,  Massachusetts,  and  taught  such  studies  as 
boys  learned.  In  1821  Emma  Willard  started  her 
girls'  seminary  at  Troy,  which  was  on  the  same  plan 
as  a  boys'  academy.  A  college  course  for  girls  was, 
as  yet,  not  thought  of.  In  the  South  girls  were  usu 
ally  taught  at  home,  by  the  mother  or  father  or  by 
the  family  tutor.  Girls  of  poor  parents  might  learn 
the  rudiments  at  a  village  school  taught  by  some 
poor  woman,  who  received  a  pittance  in  return  for 
imparting  a  pittance  of  knowledge,  but  even  this 
apology  for  education  was  available  to  few.  The 
prevalent  idea  was  that  it  was  not  desirable  to  give 
girls  much  schooling. 

But  it  was  likewise  a  prevalent  idea  that  education 
for  boys  was  a  luxury  which  the  privileged  classes 
alone  could  enjoy;  but,  as  I  have  said  before,  this 
was  a  time  of  awakening,  and  one  direction  which  it 
took  was  in  the  increase  in  facilities  for  popular  edu 
cation.  Here,  as  with  higher  education,  New  Eng 
land  led  the  way.  The  best  schools  were  there,  the 
largest  attendance,  the  keenest  pursuit  of  knowledge. 
Primary  schools  were  still  sorry  institutions  every 
where,  however. 

In  these  schools  there  could  be  no  grading,  because 
all  the  children,  young  and  old,  within  a  given  radius, 
must  attend  the  same  school,  which  comprised  only 
one  room  and  had  only  one  teacher.  It  was  kept  in 
a  frame  or  log  building  in  which  there  might  be  as 
many  as  eighty  scholars,  all  under  one  master.  The 
smallest  children  sat  on  the  front  benches,  immedi 
ately  under  the  teacher's  eye;  the  older  pupils  were 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

at  the  back.  The  little  ones  might  be  as  young  as 
three  years  old,  learning  their  A-B-C's,  and  there 
might  be  some  youths  who  were  nearly  grown  up. 
The  discipline  was  very  strict,  the  ferule,  rattan,  and 
cowhide  being  applied  to  refractory  girls  as  well  as 
boys  without  an  age  limit.  In  a  few  schools  there 
was  a  whippping-post  to  which  a  bad  pupil  could  be 
bound  when  he  was  being  flogged,  and  there  were 
instances  of  severe  cruelty  on  the  part  of  teachers. 
Notwithstanding  the  harshness  of  the  system — per 
haps  because  of  it — mutinies  took  place  occasionally, 
with  rough-and-tumble  fights  between  the  teacher  and 
scholars  and  consequent  strife  among  neighbors,  some 
of  whom  took  the  teacher's  part,  and  others  that  of 
the  scholars.  One  feature  of  the  discipline  and  in 
struction  has,  unhappily,  disappeared  from  American 
schools.  The  scholars  were  taught  manners.  When 
they  came  into  the  school-room  in  the  morning  the 
boys  must  bow  to  the  teacher,  and  the  girls  make  him 
a  courtesy.  They  were  required  to  make  these  signs 
of  respect  before  and  after  reciting,  and  when  they 
left  the  school-room.  When  they  were  dismissed  in 
the  evening  they  were  told  by  the  teacher  to  go  home 
and  "make  their  manners"  to  their  parents.  The 
school-house  was  never  a  good  building,  and  often 
a  very  dilapidated  one,  being  cared  for  generally  by 
all  and  particularly  by  none.  The  school  furniture 
comprised  long  benches,  with  rude  writing-desks  in 
front  of  them,  and  a  high  home-made  desk  for  the 
teacher  on  a  small  raised  platform.  This  desk  was 
built  of  planks  reaching  to  the  floor,  and  behind  it 
was  a  place  of  deposit  for  confiscated  tops,  balls,  etc. 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

The  school  exercises  were  written  in  ink.  Lead- 
pencils  had  been  invented,  but  they  were  too  expensive 
for  school  use,  and  slates  had  not  yet  been  introduced. 
The  scholars  or  the  teacher  made  the  ink  by  mixing 
ink-powder  and  water.  Metal  pen-points  did  not 
come  into  use  till  about  1830,  and  the  teacher  made 
the  pens  by  pointing  the  ends  of  goose  quills.  Paper 
was  expensive  and  was  husbanded  carefully.  It  was 
unruled,  and  lines  were  made  with  a  ruler  and  a  piece 
of  metal  lead.  The  district  school  was  supported  by 
tuition  fees  in  the  South,  and  attended  only  by  chil 
dren  of  the  poorer  class.  In  the  West  there  were  no 
classes  and  the  district  schools  were  used  generally;  as 
they  were  also  in  the  East.  The  teacher  was  paid  by 
taxes  in  the  East,  which  were  levied  in  the  town  or  dis 
trict.  In  some  districts  there  were  two  terms — winter 
and  summer — the  latter  kept  by  a  woman  when  the 
men  were  all  supposed  to  be  engaged  in  farm- work,  the 
former  nearly  always  by  a  man.  He  received  from 
six  to  twenty  dollars  per  month  as  salary,  and  was 
boarded  by  different  families  in  turn,  in  the  vicinity 
of  the  school.  The  woman  teacher  received  from  four 
to  ten  dollars  a  month.  Sometimes  the  teacher  lived 
well  and  sometimes  he  starved.  He  was  treated  with 
respect  as  a  personage  just  below  the  parson;  but 
he  was  generally  looked  upon  as  a  man  who  had  an 
easy  life,  because  he  did  not  have  to  perform  manual 
labor.  It  was  in  these  schools  that  the  great  majority 
of  the  people  received  all  their  education.  A  child 
might  enter  when  he  was  three  years  old;  by  seven 
he  would  be  studying  grammar;  then  he  would  learn 
to  write  and  go  into  arithmetic.  After  he  was  ten 

136 


WEBSTER'S  SPELLER 

years  old  his  attendance  at  school  was  apt  to  become 
very  irregular,  for  then  he  was  old  enough  to  do  some 
work  on  the  farm.  The  instruction  was  partly  relig 
ious.  The  Bible  was  read  in  school  every  day,  and  the 
text-books  had  something  of  religion  in  them.  The 
first  book  the  child  had  was  the  primer.  The  New 
England  Primer,  published  in  1813  at  Concord,  was 
entitled  "The  New  England  Primer,  or  an  Easy  and 
Pleasant  Guide  to  the  Art  of  Reading,  to  which  is 
added  the  Catechism" — the  catechism  being  a  score 
or  more  of  selections  from  the  Westminster  Assembly 
Shorter  Catechism,  which  contained  upward  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  questions.  The  catechism  was  com 
mitted  to  memory  without  any  comprehension  of  its 
meaning,  but  so  were  most  of  the  rules  which  the  child 
learned.  From  the  primer  he  progressed  to  the  most 
universally  used  book  that  has  ever  been  written  by 
an  American — Noah  Webster's  spelling-book.  In 
1815  it  was  already  ten  years  old  and  had  only  started 
on  a  career,  which  lasted  even  to  the  school  days  of 
some  middle-aged  people  who  read  these  lines,  by 
which  time  twenty-four  million  copies  had  been  printed 
and  sold.  In  1818  Webster  stated  that  more  than  five 
millions  of  copies  had  already  been  sold.  It  is  hardly 
an  exaggeration  to  say  that  one  hundred  years  ago 
every  child  who  went  to  school  studied  it.  Starting 
in  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts,  it  soon  circulated 
through  the  rest  of  the  country.  All  children  learned 
to  spell  from  it  in  the  same  way,  to  divide  their  words 
in  the  same  way,  and,  in  a  great  measure,  to  pronounce 
alike.  It  was  called  an  easy  standard  of  pronuncia 
tion.  The  schools,  scattered  so  far  apart,  had  this 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

link  to  join  them  together.  The  book  went  out  of 
use  first  in  the  home  of  its  birth.  It  lingered  for 
many  years  afterward  in  the  South  and  West,  and 
I  dare  say  there  are  schools  which  use  it  even  now. 
The  arithmetic  was  taught  in  the  earlier  stages  almost 
entirely  orally  and  without  books.  The  printed 
arithmetics  were  severely  practical,  being,  they  said, 
"adapted  to  the  commerce  of  the  United  States." 
The  new  currency  having  been  adopted  in  1792,  an 
important  chapter  was  given  to  instruction  how  to 
divide,  multiply,  add,  etc.,  in  "Federal  money." 
There  was  a  section  devoted  to  barter,  which  was 
the  form  of  trade  with  many  people  in  the  country. 


XVI 

READING   AND  WRITING 

NOAH  WEBSTER  called  his  speller  "The  First 
Part  of  a  Grammatical  Institute  of  the  English 
Language,"  and  it  was  part  of  a  plan  for  American 
izing  the  English  tongue.    In  the  introduction  he  said : 

This  country  must,  at  some  future  time,  be  as  distinguished 
by  the  superiority  of  her  literary  improvements  as  she  is  already 
by  the  liberality  of  her  civil  and  ecclesiastical  constitutions.  .  .  . 
For  America  in  her  infancy  to  adopt  the  present  maxims  of  the 
Old  World  would  be  to  stamp  the  wrinkle  of  decrepit  old  age  upon 
the  bloom  of  youth,  and  to  plant  the  seed  of  decay  in  a  vigorous 
constitution. 

Up  to  Webster's  time,  says  one  of  his  eulogists, 
"we  had  been  living  in  a  state  of  colonial  dependence, 
and  were  in  the  most  complete  literary  vassalage  to 
the  mother-country."  We  were  as  little  children 
"looking  eagerly  and  reverently  to  the  mother-coun 
try  for  our  supplies."  Webster  and  his  followers 
insisted  that  there  was  a  connection  between  the  liter 
ary  and  political  life  of  the  nation.  A  correspondent 
wrote  to  him,  November  23,  1790: 

Did  not  many  persons  oppose  the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Con 
stitution  at  first,  who  soon  became  convinced  of  its  goodness? 
If  it  had  never  been  formed  and  presented  to  the  public,  anarchy 
and  ruin  might  have  been  the  consequences;  and  so  if  a  Dictionary 

139 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

on  a  reformed  plan  of  spelling  should  not  be  offered  to  the  public, 
we  shall  jog  on  in  the  good  old  irregular,  absurd  way,  and  at  last 
leave  the  world  as  servile  in  this  respect  as  we  found  it.  Is  this 
the  independent  spirit  of  Americans?  I  should  blush  to  own  it 
— I  deny  it. 

A  writer  in  The  North  American  Review  for  Sep 
tember,  1815,  explained  the  difficulty  in  creating  a 
national  literature.  It  was,  he  said,  the  product  of 
a  national  language;  but  America  had  a  language 
which  it  had  accepted  from  a  nation  totally  unlike 
itself.  The  colonial  state  produced  nothing,  for  the 
mother-country  no  more  supposed  that  a  colony 
could  improve  her  literature  than  that  it  could  im 
prove  her  political  or  religious  system. 

So  Noah  Webster  led  a  rebellion,  and  had  a  fol 
lowing  of  enthusiastic  men  who  saw  the  vision  of  an 
independence  as  complete  in  letters  as  it  was  in  govern 
ment.  It  was  to  rest  upon  the  broad  basis  of  popular 
support,  and  was  not  to  depend  upon  a  favored  class. 
In  his  grammar  Webster  insisted  that  it  was  correct 
to  say  "You  was."  "The  compilers  of  grammars 
condemn  the  use  of  was  with  you"  he  said,  "but  in 
vain.  The  practice  is  universal,  except  among  men 
who  learn  the  language  by  books."  Here  was  his  pur 
pose — to  record  the  language  as  men  used  it.  He 
worked  toward  his  great  end  under  disadvantage,  be 
cause  of  the  isolation  of  the  communities  of  America. 
Writing  to  him  in  1806,  the  historian,  David  Ramsay, 
lamented  that  there  was  so  little  literary  intercourse 
between  the  states;  but  such  as  there  was  came 
largely  from  Webster's  efforts.  He  traveled  through 
the  country,  lecturing  on  language.  Before  the  Con- 

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READING  AND  WRITING 

stitution  was  adopted  he  petitioned  the  several  state 
legislatures  for  copyright  laws  and  obtained  them 
from  nearly  all.  This  was  the  first  official  recognition 
of  the  existence  of  American  authorship. 

As  everything  living  changes,  so,  Webster  in 
sisted,  the  English  language  must  change  from  time 
to  time,  and  he  would  have  the  changes  in  pronunci 
ation  recognized  by  changes  in  the  spelling.  So  he 
offered  hainous  for  heinous,  luster  for  lustre,  humor 
for  humour,  doctrin  for  doctrine,  and  a  few  other  sim 
plifications.  For  pronunciation  he  pleaded  for  that 
which  was  natural,  and,  if  possible,  for  that  which 
was  used  by  the  ordinary  man.  The  English  lan 
guage  must,  in  the  course  of  time,  be  shaped  by  Ameri 
can  usage,  he  thought.  In  his  Compendious  Diction 
ary  he  said: 

In  each  of  the  countries,  peopled  by  Englishmen,  a  distinct 
dialect  of  the  language  will  gradually  be  formed;  the  principal 
of  which  will  be  that  of  the  United  States.  In  fifty  years  from 
this  time  the  American-English  will  be  spoken  by  more  people 
than  all  the  dialects  of  the  language,  and  in  one  hundred  and 
thirty  years  by  more  people  than  any  other  language  on  the 
globe,  not  excepting  the  Chinese. 

There  had  been  a  few  radicals  who  wanted  to  make 
a  new  language  for  the  United  States,  and  there  was 
a  more  serious  effort  to  stop  calling  the  national 
language  English.  In  1778,  when  Congress  prescribed 
the  ceremonial  to  be  observed  in  receiving  the  French 
minister,  it  said  that  his  French  address  should  be 
replied  to  "in  the  language  of  the  United  States." 

On  November  12,  1807,  Webster  wrote  to  Joel 
Barlow : 

141 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

For  more  than  Iwtuiy  years,  since  I  have  looked  into  philology 
and  rjuundraed  the  connection  between  language  and  knowledge, 
and  the  mfkienrft  of  a  national  Imgoage  on  national  opinions, 
I  have  had  it  in  view  to  drflifh  this  country  as  much  as  possible 
front  its  dependence  on  the  parent  oountiy. 

In  his  two-volume  dictionary  he  said  that  many 
words  commonly  employed  in  England  were  foreign 
words  here — those  used  in  heraldry,  in  hawking,  in 
gpftftlrfng  of  feudal  tenures,  for  instance;  and  that 
many  American  words  had  no  uses  in  England — 
those  used  in  our  land-offices,  "congress,"  "select 
men,"  and  the  like;  and  that  these  differences  must 
be  recognized  as  natural  and  proper.  Dr.  Johnson 
said  that  "the  chief  glory  of  a  nation  arises  from  its 
authors,"  so  Webster  used  American  authors  to  illus 
trate  his  definitions,  and  quotations  from  Washington, 
John  Adams,  Franklin,  Madison,  Ramsay,  or  Ham 
ilton  appeared  in  the  same  paragraphs  with  excerpts 
from  Hooker,  Milton,  Shakespeare,  or  Dryden.  Web 
ster  represented  a  sane  and  fearless  radicalism.  He 
did  more  than  any  other  individual  to  give  the 
American  nation  an  independent  property  in  the  Eng 
lish  language.  He  was,  without  any  rivals  approach 
ing  him,  the  first  American  man  of  letters.  In  the 
same  class  with  him  at  Yale,  graduating  in  1778,  and, 
like  him,  born  in  Connecticut,  was  his  friend  Joel 
Barlow,  who  followed  in  his  footsteps  and  attempted 
to  do  for  poetry  what  Webster  tried  to  do  for  the 
language  and  to  give  it  the  distinctive  stamp  of  the 
new  nationality. 

Hie  epic  poem,  "The  Columbiad,"  was  published 
in  1806  and  went  through  four  editions.  The  author 

142 


READING  AND  WRITING 

said  he  wrote  it  to  foster  the  feeling  of  American 
nationality,  that  his  object  was  "altogether  of  a  moral 
and  political  nature,"  that  he  wished  "to  encourage 
and  strengthen  in  the  rising  generation  a  sense  of  the 
importance  of  republican  institutions  as  being  the 
great  foundation  of  public  and  private  happiness." 
Again : 

This  is  the  moment  in  America  to  give  such  a  direction  to  poetry, 
painting,  and  the  other  fine  arts,  that  true  glory  may  be  implanted 
in  the  minds  of  men  here,  to  take  the  place  of  the  false  and  de 
structive  ones  that  have  degraded  the  species  of  other  countries. 

So  Barlow  sang  of  Christopher  Columbus  and  the 
discovery  and  settlement  of  America  in  a  poem  over 
six  hundred  lines  long,  in  a  meter  and  in  language 
which  were  borrowed,  exemplifying,  in  fact,  the  futility 
of  his  own  aspirations.  There  is  hardly  any  one  now 
living  who  has  read  "The  Columbiad"  through,  yet 
the  English  is  good,  although  the  poetry  is  bad,  and 
the  elaborate  purpose  of  the  author  is  industriously 
sustained.  When  the  poem  appeared  long  poems 
were  a  popular  mode  of  expression,  and  the  reviewers 
generally  spoke  highly  of  "The  Columbiad."  Many 
people  bought  the  book,  which  showed  that  they 
wanted  a  literature  of  their  own.  Doubtless  many 
people  admired  it.  They  were  members  of  a  young, 
immature,  and  ambitious  nation,  and  thought  that 
to  be  strong  and  noble  which  was  in  reality  only  fear 
less,  crude,  and  bombastic.  Nevertheless,  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  book  was  ever  read  much.  Barlow 
was  known  as  the  author  of  "The  Columbiad,"  but 
"The  Columbiad"  was  known  only  by  the  title  on 

H3 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

the  cover.  In  1819  a  commentator  in  the  literary 
paper  published  in  Alexandria,  then  in  the  District 
of  Columbia,  spoke  of  it  thus: 

That  huge  and  incongruous  mass  of  political  monstrosities, 
"The  Columbiad,"  is  now  scarcely  considered  worthy  of  criti 
cism — and  is  by  far  a  greater  outrage  upon  the  memory  of  Colum 
bus  than  ever  despotism  inflicted  on  his  person. 

The  periodicals  all  professed  to  have  an  ideal  like 
Barlow's.  Thus,  The  Portfolio,  published  in  Phila 
delphia,  which  was  one  of  the  best,  declared  its  ob 
ject  to  be  "the  promotion  of  American  literature, 
the  cultivation  of  taste,  the  encouragement  of  the 
fine  arts,  the  inculcation  of  sound  morality,  and  the 
dissemination  of  general  truth."  The  lesser  literary 
papers  claimed  the  same  general  purpose.  Some  of 
them  were:  The  Eye,  published  by  "Obediah  Optic" 
at  Philadelphia,  begun  in  1807;  The  Journal  of  the 
Times,  at  Baltimore,  begun  in  1818;  the  Boston 
Weekly  Magazine,  begun  in  1816;  and  the  Columbian 
Telescope  and  Literary  Compiler,  published  at  Alex 
andria,  begun  in  1819.  All  of  them  showed  a  credit 
able  striving  for  literary  expression.  They  were 
written  in  good  English,  they  taught  good  morals, 
and  they  were  patriotic.  The  Columbian  Telescope 
was  a  fair  example  of  its  class,  although  it  was  not 
as  good  as  some  of  the  other  papers.  It  was  edited 
by  "The  Trio,"  being  "Geoffry  Whimsical,"  a  humor 
ous  philosopher;  "Solomon  Studious,"  a  tiresome 
pedant,  who  was  eternally  airing  a  cheap  classical 
knowledge,  a  character  who  appears  in  nearly  all  the 
lighter  literature  of  the  day;  and  "Peter  Quiz,"  a 

144 


READING  AND  WRITING 

satirist  of  present-day  habits  and  weaknesses.  Nearly 
a  third  of  the  paper  was  devoted  to  "The  Parnassian 
Bouquet,"  being  verses,  some  borrowed  and  some 
original.  The  poets  sang  of  love  and  friendship,  ad 
monished  their  readers  to  follow  the  path  of  virtue, 
told  of  humorous  occurrences  at  convivial  gatherings, 
and  proclaimed  the  glory  of  Columbia.  The  heavy 
articles  were  reviews  of  serious  books,  and  moral  and 
semi-religious  essays.  Some  of  the  papers  had  a  great 
deal  to  say  about  art,  and  the  Boston  Weekly  Maga 
zine  had  a  column  devoted  to  the  theater.  All  the 
papers  had  some  humorous  paragraphs.  These  papers 
were  better  than  papers  of  the  corresponding  class 
are  at  the  present  day.  The  humor  was  richer,  the 
articles,  in  both  prose  and  verse,  were  more  carefully 
written,  more  thoughtful,  more  informing,  and  the 
moral  tone  was  higher.  They  were  beneficial  in  their 
influence. 

One  of  the  lighter  fortnightlies  is  read  occasionally 
even  at  the  present  day.  Salmagundi,  or  the  Whim 
Whams  and  Opinions  of  Launcelot  Langstaff,  Esq.,  and 
Others  was  issued  in  New  York  for  about  a  year.  It 
was  revived  some  years  later,  but  not  under  the  same 
authorship,  and  the  charm  had  fled.  William  and 
Washington  Irving  and  James  Kirke  Paulding  were 
the  authors  of  the  issue  of  1807.  The  theater,  music, 
the  fashions,  follies,  and  amusements  of  New  York 
society,  were  the  topics  treated  with  delightful  humor 
and  good  taste.  No  names  were  given  and  the  lam 
poons  were  harmless.  It  speaks  well  for  the  intelli 
gence  of  the  wealthier  class  of  residents  of  New  York 
that  they  were  delighted  with  this  paper.  One  like 
10  145 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

it  could  not  now  survive,  because  the  tone  is  too  high 
and  the  humor  too  innocent  to  suit  the  taste  of  the 
present  day. 

The  monthly,  bi-monthly,  and  quarterly  magazines, 
such  as  the  Literary  Magazine  and  North  American 
Review  at  Boston,  The  Portfolio  and  Analectic  at 
Philadelphia,  and  the  Monthly  Magazine  at  New  York, 
were  better  than  the  weeklies  and  fortnightlies.  There 
were  a  great  many  religious  reviews,  and  they  also 
were  literary  periodicals.  Almost  every  sect  had  one 
or  more  of  them,  and  it  is  a  fact  which  shows  that 
they  were  not  bigoted  in  tone  that  one  must  read  some 
ways  into  one  of  them  to  find  what  sect  published  it. 
When  Bishop  John  Carroll,  the  Catholic,  died  in  1815 
the  Protestant  reviews  generally  eulogized  him. 

The  South  played  no  part  in  the  literary  develop 
ment  of  the  country.  The  reading  class  in  that  sec 
tion  was  numerically  small  and  very  conservative  in 
its  habits.  The  planters  read  what  English  country 
gentlemen  read — the  classics,  the  English  masters, 
and  their  own  newspapers.  They  were  slow  to  admit 
a  new  book.  Very  few  libraries  in  the  South  contained 
the  American  books  which  were  being  read  in  the 
North  and  East.  But  the  South  had  a  civilization 
of  its  own  and  a  part  of  it  should  be  a  literature,  but 
it  strove  in  vain  to  create  it.  It  was  not  until  1828 
that  Charleston  had  the  Southern  Review,  and  not 
until  1834  that  Richmond  had  the  Southern  Literary 
Messenger.  Occasionally,  the  Southern  presses  issued 
a  heavy  book,  and  this  was  all,  except  the  newspapers 
and  political  pamphlets,  that  the  South  contributed 
to  literature. 

146 


READING  AND  WRITING 

To  name  a  few  of  the  issues  of  the  press  will  serve 
to  indicate  the  direction  of  the  public  taste.  In  law 
there  was  Wheaton's  Digest  of  Maritime  Law,  pub 
lished  at  New  York;  in  economics,  John  Bristed's 
Resources  of  the  British  Empire,  also  at  New  York; 
in  history  and  biography,  Belknap's  History  of  New 
Hampshire,  at  Boston,  and  William  Wirt's  Life  of 
Patrick  Henry,  at  Philadelphia;  in  ethnology,  Ward- 
den's  translation  of  a  French  work  on  the  intellectual 
and  moral  faculties  and  literature  of  negroes;  in 
travel  and  adventure,  John  R.  Jewitt's  Narrative 
of  Adventures  during  a  Captivity  of  Three  Years  among 
the  Savages  of  Nootka  Sound,  at  Middletown,  Connec 
ticut,  and  Captain  Porter's  Cruise  of  the  Essex,  at 
Philadelphia;  in  humor  and  fiction,  John  Decastro  and 
His  Brother's  Bat,  commonly  called  Old  Crab,  at  New 
York,  and  Hugh  Henry  Brackenridge's  Modern  Chiv 
alry,  Containing  the  Adventures  of  a  Captain  and  Teague 
O' Regan,  his  Servant,  at  Richmond ;  in  sensational  fic 
tion,  Duyckinck's  The  Sicilian  Pirate,  at  New  York. 
Of  poetry  there  were  American  editors  of  Burns,  Camp 
bell,  and  Thomson's  "Seasons."  There  was  a  steady 
stream  of  religious  books,  ranging  from  a  Charles 
ton,  South  Carolina,  publication,  A  Dissertation  on  the 
Prophecies  Relative  to  Antichrist  and  the  Last  Times, 
by  Ethan  Smith,  pastor  of  the  Church  in  Hopkinton, 
New  Hampshire,  to  John  Foster's  Discourse  on  Church 
Musick,  published  at  Brighton,  Massachusetts.  The 
novels  were  few  and  were  the  most  insignificant  part 
of  the  publications.  The  public  taste  did  not  demand 
them,  and  for  the  time  the  production  was  slight. 
Charles  Brockden  Brown,  the  first  American  novelist, 

147 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

died  in  1810,  and  there  was  no  one  to  take  his  place 
for  some  years. 

In  1809  Irving's  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New 
York,  which  was  really  a  work  of  fiction,  appeared.  It 
was  received  with  universal  applause  and  established 
the  reputation  of  the  author.  He  was  the  first  Amer 
ican  to  make  a  literary  reputation  in  Europe,  but  he 
made  it  here  when  he  applied  his  art  to  American  life. 
A  few  years  later  the  case  of  the  greatest  of  American 
novelists  illustrated  again  the  insistence  of  the  nation 
upon  its  own. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper  published  at  New  York 
his  novel  Precaution  in  1820.  It  was  an  example  of 
slavish  imitation  and  literary  thraldom.  The  style 
was  English,  the  scene  was  laid  in  England,  the  char 
acters  were  English,  and  the  English  reviewers  thought 
the  book  was  by  one  of  their  own  authors.  It  aroused 
no  interest  in  this  country  and  deserved  none.  The 
next  year  The  Spy  appeared.  Here  was  a  novel  with 
an  incident  of  the  Revolution  for  the  plot,  the  scene 
laid  in  a  county  in  New  York,  the  characters  Amer 
icans.  It  leaped  into  success  and  became  at  once  the 
most-read  novel  in  the  United  States,  and  Cooper's 
career  was  fixed. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  the  reading  public 
of  1815  was  limited,  and  that  there  were  a  great  many 
people  who  could  not  read  at  all.  People  of  this  class 
now  read,  and  a  large  mass  of  literature  is  provided 
for  them;  but  in  1815  the  servant  girls,  day  laborers, 
and  poor  farmers  who  could  read  were  so  few  that 
they  had  no  literature  of  their  own.  They  had  to  be 
content  with  the  Bible  and  the  newspaper.  In  fact, 

148 


READING  AND  WRITING 

they  read  what  more  cultivated  people  read,  but  they 
read  very  little.  Their  imaginations  were  not  ex 
cited  by  books  and  papers  designed  expressly  for  that 
purpose.  There  was  no  slum  literature.  The  people 
of  the  slums  were  too  ignorant  to  read  it.  There  were 
no  department  newspapers,  attempting  to  cover  the 
whole  range  of  human  wants  and  make  themselves 
indispensable  to  all  classes  of  readers.  Literature 
was  held  to  be  something  higher  than  ordinary  life; 
the  printing-press  was  considered  to  be  the  vehicle 
for  depicting  mankind  washed  and  in  good  clothes. 

The  newspapers  varied  greatly  in  merit,  but  they 
were  all  well  written.  They  were  not  newspapers  as 
we  understand  the  term.  There  was  no  systematic 
co-operative  news-gathering.  The  only  reporting  was 
of  the  proceedings  of  Congress  and  the  state  legisla 
tures.  The  other  news  in  a  paper  was  picked  up  here 
and  there  from  other  papers  and  from  letters  sent  to 
the  editor,  and  there  was  nothing  continuous  about 
it  from  day  to  day.  At  seaports,  however,  the  papers 
gave  the  entrances  and  clearances  of  vessels.  One 
might  read  his  newspaper  for  a  month  and  not  read 
of  a  crime.  There  was  no  fear  of  printing  long  articles. 
When  the  Hartford  Convention  issued  its  report 
January  4,  1815,  the  newspapers  generally  printed 
it  in  full,  although  it  took  up  a  page  and  a  half 
of  the  paper  and  was  an  argumentative,  closely  rea 
soned  state  paper  which  no  one  but  an  intelligent 
man,  well  versed  in  the  principles  of  government, 
could  have  read  with  understanding.  Important 
speeches  in  Congress  were  often  printed  in  full,  oc 
cupying  two,  three,  or  more  columns  of  a  paper  which 

149 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

had  only  four  pages.  It  was  the  custom  to  print  long 
communications  over  assumed  names,  such  as  "Cato," 
"Falkland,"  "Hampden,"  on  political  questions.  They 
were  polemical,  nearly  always  able,  and  often  pro 
found.  They  were  apt  to  reappear  in  pamphlet  form. 
Under  the  law  the  statutes  were  promulgated  through 
the  chief  newspapers,  being  printed  in  extenso  on  the 
first  page.  The  papers  were  expensive.  The  Phila 
delphia  Mercantile  Advertiser •,  published  daily  except 
Sundays  and  holidays,  cost  eight  dollars  per  annum; 
the  Charleston  Courier,  also  daily,  the  same  price,  but 
it  issued  a  country  paper  three  times  a  week  for  five 
dollars  per  annum;  the  Norfolk  Herald,  published 
twice  a  week,  cost  six  dollars  per  annum;  the  Rich 
mond  Enquirer,  published  three  times  a  week  during 
the  sessions  of  the  legislature  and  twice  a  week  during 
the  rest  of  the  year,  cost  five  dollars  per  annum.  The 
papers  passed  from  hand  to  hand  and  were  read  by 
many  who  could  not  afford  to  buy  them. 

It  is  plain  that  people  who  read  these  newspapers 
must  have  had  an  extraordinary  taste  for  affairs  of  gov 
ernment  and  that  they  must  have  had  a  knowledge  of 
them.  It  is  plain,  too,  that  they  must  have  had  strong 
minds  if  they  fed  them  on  such  strong  mental  food. 

The  newspapers  conveyed  to  them,  however,  one 
form  of  literature  which  was  calculated  rather  to  stim 
ulate  their  passions  than  to  strengthen  their  minds; 
yet,  as  it  was  peculiarly  American,  it  requires  a  word 
of  notice.  It  was  the  custom  of  the  newspapers  to 
print  cards  or  notices,  signed  by  individuals  who  were 
responsible  for  their  contents,  denouncing  other  in 
dividuals  who  were  named.  Often  a  card  was  also 

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READING  AND  WRITING 

printed  as  a  broadside  to  be  pasted  up  and  distributed. 
On  the  trees  near  the  court-houses,  or  in  other  con 
spicuous  places  where  many  people  would  be  sure  to 
see  them,  these  notices  could  be  found.  They  were 
interesting  and  ingenious  compositions  and  their  con 
sequences  were  often  deadly.  They  were  worded 
carefully,  so  as  to  convey  insult,  denunciation,  de 
fiance,  and  contempt  of  the  individual  to  whom  they 
,-were  addressed.  They  were  the  prelude  to  personal 
affrays,  duels,  or  murders.  They  were  common  in 
the  South  and  Southwest,  but  they  appeared  in  all 
sections  of  the  country.  After  the  crisis  which  they 
produced  had  taken  place,  long  circumstantial  ac 
counts  of  it  and  of  the  events  leading  up  to  it  would 
be  written  by  the  witnesses,  accessories,  or  principals. 
These  accounts  were  minute  in  detail  and  were  pre 
pared  with  great  painstaking,  and  from  the  original 
publication  might  spring  a  considerable  body  of 
printed  statements.  This  form  of  literature  was  pro 
duced  by  the  better  educated  men,  but  their  example 
spread  occasionally  into  the  lower  grades  of  society, 
as  the  following  extract  from  the  Norfolk  Herald  of 
June  24,  1815,  will  show.  It  comes  from  a  man  who 
had  a  grievance  over  a  question  of  personal  property : 

NOTICE. 

The  designing  hypocrite  who  comes  under  the  appellation  of 
William  Pendred  has  wantonly  seeked  an  opportunity  of  dis 
crediting  me  in  the  public  papers.  ...  I  am  very  sorry  that  I  am 
reduced  to  the  necessity  of  altercating  with  so  ordinary  a  char 
acter  as  he  is  known  to  be.  Though  should  I  be  the  character 
who  he  alludes  to  respecting  his  brother's  clothes,  I  assert  him 
to  be  an  infamous  Iyer,  which  would  be  sufficiently  in  my  power 
to  prove  at  any  time  when  called  upon. 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

And  the  following  is  from  General  P.  J.  Hays,  of 
Tennessee,  a  man  who  stood  high,  a  friend  and  de 
voted  adherent  of  Andrew  Jackson.  It  is  undated 
and  is  found  among  General  Jackson's  papers: 

To  the  Public: 

Although  I  can  never  undertake  to  defend  any  man's  conduct 
whether  "right  or  wrong"  I  am  not  disposed  to  find  fault  with 
that  filial  sensibility  which  seeks  to  vindicate  a  father's  fame. 
In  accordance  with  it  I  have  endeavoured  to  shew  that  Wm.  P. 
Anderson's  imputations  against  the  character  of  my  deceased 
father  were  unfounded,  and  that  Anderson  himself  is  so  base  as 
to  deprive  his  assertions  of  all  credit.  These  objects  I  believe 
I  have  accomplished.  His  son,  R.  K.  Anderson,  has,  it  appears, 
been  instigated  by  a  certain  political  Doctor  in  this  place — who 
shines  rather  as  a  monkey  than  a  catspaw — to  meet  the  evi 
dence  I  submitted  of  his  father's  dishonor  by  vague  and  vulgar 
abuse  of  myself — abuse  as  vile  as  his  own  character  and  which 
it  is  impossible  for  a  gentleman  either  to  utter  or  to  notice.  I 
cannot  be  drawn  into  a  controversy  with  a  person  so  disrepu 
table  as  this  Rufus  K.  Anderson,  who  is  represented  by  his  own 
father  as  given  to  thieving,  and  who  in  this  case  is  notoriously 
the  instrument  of  a  calumniator,  more  contemptible,  because 
more  cowardly,  than  a  highway  robber — a  calumniator  who  is 
proved  to  have  lied  away  his  own  honor  by  the  testimony  of 
Messrs.  Parrish,  Foster,  Fitzgerald,  Black  and  Marshall. 


XVII 

PIRATES   AND   DEBTORS 

GENERAL  HAYS'S  friend  and  patron,  Andrew 
Jackson,  was  as  familiar  with  posting  literature 
and  its  consequences  as  any  man  in  America.  He 
had  contributed  both  to  the  literature  and  to  the 
consequences.  In  his  propensity  for  quarreling  and 
fighting  he  was  an  exaggerated  example  of  a  type  of 
men  who  flourished  in  his  day  and  in  the  part  of  the 
country  where  he  lived.  They  were  not  bad  men, 
but  performed  their  public  and  private  duties  faith 
fully,  were  enterprising  and  industrious.  They  held 
human  life  cheap,  however,  and  placed  their  notions 
of  honor  above  everything  else.  They  thought  it  no 
sin  to  hate  and  harbor  the  passion  of  revenge.  At  the 
same  time  they  were  loyal  in  friendship,  devoted  in 
kinship,  and  grateful  for  kindness.  There  was  a  great 
deal  of  the  Indian's  nature  in  them.  De  Tocque- 
ville  studied  the  red  man  and  said  that  he  was  "mild 
and  hospitable  when  at  peace,  though  merciless  in 
war  beyond  any  known  degree  of  human  ferocity," 
and  so  it  was  with  his  white  neighbors.  They  had  to 
fight  the  Indians  incessantly.  Even  in  the  more 
populous  parts  of  the  country  they  were  removed  by 
only  a  few  years  from  constant  Indian  warfare.  So, 
as  they  thought  of  Indians  a  great  deal,  they  came  to 

153 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

be  like  them,  and  were  often  ferocious  and  merciless 
in  private  warfare,  when  the  opposing  forces  were  two 
men  who  might  possess  all  the  domestic  virtues. 
Physical  bravery  was  the  most  essential  attribute  of 
a  man,  and  he  must  be  ready  to  endure  suffering  with 
out  complaint,  like  the  Indian  who  sang  a  death  song 
when  burning  at  the  stake.  In  at  least  two  duels 
in  which  he  was  the  second,  General  Jackson  named 
as  the  distance  between  the  combatants  from  six  to 
nine  feet,  the  weapons  being  pistols.  In  the  duel  in 
which  he  killed  Charles  Dickinson  in  1795  he  went  to 
the  field  determined  to  kill.  He  said  afterward  that 
his  purpose  had  been  so  strong  that  he  would  have 
been  able  to  stand  long  enough  to  accomplish  it  even 
if  he  had  been  shot  through  the  head.  Instances  of 
such  predominance  of  will  power  were  told  of  and 
believed.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  did  shoot  Dickinson 
after  he  had  himself  been  badly  wounded.  A  few 
years  later  Armistead  Thomson  Mason,  soon  after 
he  had  retired  as  a  Senator  from  Virginia,  was  killed 
in  a  duel  in  which  six  paces  separated  the  principals, 
who  fought  with  muskets.  Instances  of  similar  con 
tempt  for  death  could  be  multiplied.  Many  men  kept 
guns  or  pistols  exclusively  for  use  in  duels,  and  some 
of  them  with  grim  humor  gave  their  weapons  proper 
names.  One  of  the  most  accomplished  citizens  of 
Georgia,  a  governor,  soldier,  poet,  and  artist,  called 
his  dueling  rifle  the  "Hungry  Tigress,"  and  his  neigh 
bor  had  one  which  he  called  "Spiteful  Sue."  The  os 
tensible  cause  of  General  Jackson's  duel  with  Dickinson 
was  a  dispute  over  a  wager  on  a  horse-race;  but  there 
was  a  rumor  that  Dickinson  and  his  friends  wanted 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

to  get  Jackson  out  of  the  way  because  of  his  increas 
ing  political  importance,  and  there  was  another  sto 
ry  that  Jackson  had  heard  that  Dickinson  had  spo 
ken  lightly  of  Mrs.  Jackson's  reputation.  Causes  like 
these  were  the  basis  of  many  duels;  but  in  their  wake 
flowed  a  multitude  of  trivial  reasons. 

Young  swaggerers  and  coarse  bullies  tried  to  get 
the  name  of  being  duelists.  It  added  to  their  social 
importance,  and  they  sought  and  gave  insults  without 
excuse.  At  a  time  when  all  men  drank  and  nearly 
all  drank  too  much  occasionally,  duels  often  came  from 
the  unpremeditated  remarks  of  tipsy  men.  Not  all 
the  men  who  fought  duels  had  fiery  tempers  or  bully 
ing  dispositions,  however.  Some  were  benignant  citi 
zens,  who  reprobated  the  practice  and  only  followed 
it  because  a  refusal  to  do  so  would  have  subjected 
them  to  the  unbearable  charge  of  cowardice  and  have 
resulted  in  a  loss  of  their  influence  in  the  community. 
Alexander  Hamilton  accepted  Burr's  challenge  in  1804 
because  he  knew  that,  if  he  refused,  his  career  as 
a  public  man  would  be  closed.  In  vain  did  the  clergy 
protest  against  the  duel  as  a  violation  of  God's  law; 
in  vain  did  enlightened  laymen  denounce  it  as  both 
foolish  and  wicked ;  no  man  dared  to  refuse  a  challenge 
if  it  was  given  for  what  was  recognized  as  a  valid 
reason,  and  few  dared  not  to  send  one  if  their  honor 
was  assailed.  Many  duels  were  abortive,  but  these 
were  not  the  rule.  Rarely  were  the  weapons  swords 
or  rapiers;  nearly  always  the  long-barreled  pistol  or 
the  heavy  musket  was  used,  and  most  Americans 
were  good  shots. 

The  women  were  all  opposed  to  dueling.    When  a 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

meeting  was  to  take  place  the  fact  was  hidden  from 
them;  but  there  were  many  women  of  gentle,  Chris 
tian  lives  who  stood  aside  and  allowed  their  men  to 
go  to  the  field  of  honor  as  they  allowed  them  to  go 
into  battle  when  their  country  was  at  war. 

Dueling  was  a  crime  peculiar  to  the  higher  classes. 
It  was  remarked  that  "not  one  in  ten  thousand  was 
entitled  to  leave  the  world  in  this  manner."  Never 
theless,  many  left  it  in  this  manner.  There  was  hardly 
a  family  of  the  planter  class  in  the  South  and  South 
west  that  did  not  have  one  or  more  duels  recorded  in 
its  annals.  It  was  the  custom  of  The  North  American 
Review  to  print  in  each  issue  a  list  of  notable  deaths 
by  violence  which  had  taken  place  during  the  pre 
ceding  two  months,  and  the  list  nearly  always  included 
some  one  who  had  fallen  in  a  duel,  oftenest  in  the 
South,  often  in  the  Middle  States,  and  occasionally 
in  the  North  and  East.  In  New  England,  where  there 
were  few  of  the  gentry,  duels  were  of  rare  occurrence. 
The  bad  eminence  of  the  South  was  due  to  the  pres 
ence  of  a  landed  aristocracy  which  adhered  to  Old 
World  customs,  to  a  warm  climate  which  produced 
an  irritable  physical  condition,  to  idleness  and  the 
consequent  gambling  and  drinking,  to  the  intolerant 
and  domineering  temper  which  came  to  the  owner 
of  slaves.  More  duels  took  place  in  the  South  in  a 
month  than  took  place  in  the  rest  of  the  country  in 
a  year.  It  was  not  till  many  years  after  the  time  of 
which  I  am  writing  that  dueling  declined,  disappear 
ing  first  in  the  East  and  North,  then  in  the  Middle 
States,  and  last  in  the  South,  giving  way  before  the 
softening  influences  of  a  general  advance  of  civiliza- 

156 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

tion  and  a  modification  of  standards  of  honor  produced 
by  the  less  frequent  recurrence  of  wars. 

Although  dueling  flourished  in  1815,  unlawful  man 
slaughter  by  lynching  had  not  yet  come  into  practice. 
When  summary  justice  was  visited  it  was  by  what 
was  termed  "club  law,"  an  expression  derived  from 
the  voluntary  organizations  which  existed  in  various 
parts  of  the  country  for  protection  against- criminals 
where  regular  authority  could  not  enforce  the  law. 
These  clubs  proceeded  in  orderly  manner  and  not  as 
mobs.  Usually  they  warned  their  victims  of  impend 
ing  punishment,  the  object  being  to  make  them  move 
away.  Commonly  they  punished  by  whipping.  Rarely 
did  they  hang  a  man,  and  when  they  did  they  might 
try  him  before  an  improvised  court  beforehand.  They 
illustrated  the  capacity  of  the  people  for  self-govern 
ment  rather  than  a  spirit  of  lawlessness.  There  was 
a  great  deal  of  irregular  justice  inflicted  immediately 
after  the  Revolution,  when  society  was  in  a  disordered 
state;  there  was  a  great  deal  at  a  later  period  when 
the  idea  of  direct  power  of  the  people  began  to  sink 
in;  but  between  1792  and  1819,  a  transition  period, 
there  was  little.  Lynching  did  not  become  an  in 
stitution  until  after  the  Civil  War,  when  a  new  species 
of  negro  crime  became  prevalent. 

There  were  a  great  many  escapes  from  the  law  a 
hundred  years  ago.  Information  that  a  crime  had 
been  committed  traveled  no  faster  than  the  escaping 
criminal,  and  the  wild,  uninhabited  regions  were  an 
asylum  which  was  near  at  hand.  There  was  no  de 
tective  system,  and  when  a  man  was  robbed,  or  when 
his  slave  or  apprentice  ran  away,  he  invoked  the  aid 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

of  the  public  to  apprehend  the  culprit  and  recover 
his  property  by  an  advertisement  in  the  newspapers. 
The  following  from  a  Norfolk  paper  will  serve  as  an 
example.  It  related  to  the  escape  of  a  negro  woman 
who  talked  "very  modest,"  but  was  "fond  of  dancing 
and  smoking  segars,"  and  apparently  to  other  prop 
erty  losses: 

...  I  further  make  public  that  I  have  bought  a  blood-hound 
of  the  most  furious  kind;  therefore  I  beg  my  friends  will  send  no 
young  children  alone  to  my  house,  nor  allow  their  servants  to 
attempt  the  house  by  the  yard  way,  without  the  greatest  caution. 

A  great  many  criminals  escaped  punishment  be 
cause  the  penalties  prescribed  for  their  offenses  were 
too  severe.  The  states  had  inherited  the  common 
law  of  England  with  its  long  list  of  capital  offenses 
and  barbarous  punishments;  and  where  the  punish 
ment  went  beyond  all  measure  it  was  not  enforced. 
Thus  in  New  Hampshire  the  list  of  crimes  for  which 
the  punishment  was  death  included  murder,  arson, 
burglary,  felonious  assault,  rape,  and  treason.  Vir 
ginia  had  in  her  list  selling  a  free  man  as  a  slave  and 
stealing  a  slave.  In  Georgia,  where  a  moderate  code 
was  adopted  in  1811,  counterfeiting  was  a  capital 
crime,  as  it  was  in  several  other  states.  Yet  counter 
feiting  was  a  common  offense,  the  opportunities  to 
commit  it  being  numerous  and  the  temptation  too 
strong  to  be  resisted.  There  were  scores  of  different 
kinds  of  paper  currency  issued  by  local  banks,  crudely 
printed  and  easy  to  imitate,  and,  in  consequence, 
much  false  money  was  in  circulation.  The  severity 
of  a  penalty  was  often  an  indication  that  the  crime 

158 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

was  common  and  that  an  effort  was  being  made  to 
stop  it  by  terrifying  those  who  felt  inclined  to  commit 
it.  Under  the  law  of  North  Carolina  a  convicted 
counterfeiter  must  stand  in  the  pillory  for  three  hours 
and  have  his  right  ear  nailed  to  the  pillory  and  cut 
off;  must  then  receive  thirty-nine  lashes  upon  his 
bare  back,  and  be  branded  with  a  red-hot  iron  on 
the  right  cheek  with  the  letter  C  and  on  the  left  cheek 
with  the  letter  M,  besides  forfeiting  half  his  goods 
and  chattels  and  suffering  imprisonment.  For  the 
second  offense — it  is  difficult  to  see  how  a  man  thus 
marked  could  accomplish  it — the  punishment  was 
death.  In  Delaware,  by  an  act  passed  February  7, 
1817,  a  forger  was  fined  and  imprisoned,  and  then 
must  "  forever  wear  the  letter  F  made  of  scarlet  cloth 
sewed  on  the  outside  of  his  outer  garment  on  the  back 
between  the  shoulders,  of  at  least  six  inches  square/' 
I  have  found  no  record  of  men  with  branded  cheeks 
and  only  one  ear  wandering  about  the  countryside  in 
North  Carolina,  nor  in  Delaware  of  unfortunates 
wearing  coats  with  a  red  F  in  the  middle  of  the  back. 
It  must  be  that  the  punishment  was  inflicted  very 
seldom. 

Generally  speaking,  the  criminal  law  was  assum 
ing  a  more  merciful  aspect,  and  was  leaving  out  the 
old  idea  of  vengeance  and  punishment  for  punish 
ment's  sake.  The  prevailing  tendency  was  indicated 
by  the  code  adopted  by  Maryland  in  1809,  which  pro 
claimed  as  its  object  the  reform  of  the  criminal  by  a 
"mild  and  justly  proportioned  scale  of  punishment," 
and  by  the  pronouncement  of  the  General  Assembly 
of  Louisiana  in  1820,  "that  it  is  of  primary  impor- 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

tance  in  every  well-regulated  state,  that  the  code  of 
criminal  law  should  be  founded  on  one  principle — 
the  prevention  of  crime." 

To  prevent  the  crime  of  piracy  was  one  of  the  prob 
lems  of  the  time,  and  a  new  variety  had  arisen,  bred 
of  the  political  commotions  which  now  began  to  assume 
an  acute  stage  in  the  Spanish-speaking  countries  lying 
off  our  Southern  coast.  It  is  true  that  the  old  days  of 
great  piracy  on  the  Spanish  Main  had  passed,  but  the 
West-Indian  waters  still  held  a  great  many  sea  robbers, 
some  engaged  in  the  slave  trade,  some  bearing  com 
missions  as  privateers,  and  some  flying  the  black  flag 
without  pretense  of  lawful  purpose.  Some  of  the 
merchants  of  the  surrounding  ports  profited  by  the 
robberies  and  encouraged  them,  and  slave-dealers  in 
the  United  States  bought  from  them.  The  slave 
trade  became  unlawful  in  1808,  and  in  1820  was  de 
clared  to  be  piracy,  but  slavers  did  not  respect  stat 
utes  unless  they  were  enforced.  The  trade  was  still 
lawful  in  Spanish  dominions,  and  Havana  especially 
was  the  resort  of  slave-vessels,  whence  many  slaves 
were  smuggled  to  the  mainland.  The  federal  govern 
ment  could  only  lessen  the  iniquity;  it  could  not  sup 
press  it.  The  slave  coast  of  Africa  was  so  long  that 
it  was  impossible  to  patrol  it  successfully,  and  con 
venient  points  on  the  Southern  coast  of  the  United 
States  could  be  chosen  for  landing-places  for  the  car 
goes.  Many  thousands  of  slaves  were  smuggled  in, 
scores  of  slave -vessels  were  captured,  and  the  sup 
pression  of  the  slave  trade  presented  a  continuous 
problem  for  fifty-seven  years.  But  the  ordinary 
pirates  of  the  West  Indies  did  not  confine  themselves 

160 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

to  taking  slaves.  All  was  fish  that  came  to  their  kettle, 
and  vessels  with  specie  in  their  holds  were  their  fa 
vorite  food.  The  pirates  were  Spaniards,  Portuguese, 
negroes,  and  a  few  English  and  Americans.  One  of 
the  worst  pirates  that  ever  was  hanged  was  already 
beginning .  his  career.  He  was  Charles  Gibbs,  born  in 
Rhode  Island,  and  executed  in  New  Orleans  in  1831, 
after  he  had  confessed  to  the  murder  of  nearly  four 
hundred  people.  In  1822  Lieut.  William  Howard 
Allen,  U.  S.  N.,  was  killed  off  Matanzas,  Cuba,  while 
boarding  a  pirate  vessel,  and  his  death  excited  a  great 
deal  of  indignation.  The  following  year  a  fleet  under 
Commodore  David  Porter  was  sent  against  the  pirates, 
and  inflicted  such  severe  punishment  that  their  power 
was  broken.  The  new  variety  of  piracy  was  more 
difficult  to  deal  with,  for  it  was  sporadic  in  its  re 
currence  and  proceeded  under  cover  of  political  pur 
poses. 

Immediately  after  our  independence  the  rich  do 
main  of  Spain,  lying  almost  undefended  by  its  owner 
upon  our  west  and  south,  was  a  constant  temptation 
to  venturesome  Americans  who  hoped  to  gain  wealth 
and  power  by  short  routes.  When  Louisiana  passed 
to  our  possession  they  turned  their  attention  to  the 
remaining  Spanish  territory  lying  on  our  southern 
and  southwestern  border  and  adjacent  to  our  south 
ern  coast,  and  found,  besides,  a  field  for  their  activi 
ties  by  assisting  the  Spanish  colonies  in  their  revolt 
against  the  parent  state.  Everybody  in  the  United 
States  sympathized  with  the  revolt,  and  the  revolu 
tionists  received  material  as  well  as  moral  support; 
but  many  of  those  who  went  ostensibly  to  assist  them 
11  161 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

were  looking  only  to  their  own  aggrandizement  and 
used  the  revolutions  as  a  cloak  for  spoliations  and 
smuggling  operations.  The  first  of  these  outlaws  to 
establish  an  American  base  were  three  brothers,  Jean, 
Pierre,  and  Dominique  Lafitte.  They  had  lived  in 
Louisiana  and  were  Frenchmen  by  birth,  but  Amer 
icans  by  preference.  The  leader,  Jean  Lafitte,  had 
been  a  straight  pirate,  or,  at  any  rate,  was  generally 
believed  to  have  been  one.  They  established  them 
selves  at  Grand  Terre,  an  island  in  Barrataria  Bay, 
just  west  of  the  mouths  of  the  Mississippi  River,  and 
their  boats  sailed  as  privateers  under  the  flag  of  the 
new  Republic  of  Carthagena.  They  gathered  fol 
lowers  until  the  population  of  Grand  Terre  numbered 
about  four  hundred  people.  Residents  of  the  neigh 
boring  country  went  there  to  buy  plunder  quite  openly, 
and  there  was  an  active  commerce  between  the  Barra- 
tarians  and  Donaldsonville  and  New  Orleans  in  Loui 
siana.  Visitors  who  met  Jean  Lafitte  reported  that 
he  was  a  mild-mannered  man  and  a  loss  to  good  so 
ciety,  that  he  had  a  good  cook  and  excellent  wines — 
and  some  of  the  wines  found  their  way  to  the  tables 
of  the  connoisseurs  of  New  Orleans.  The  Lafittes 
had  ready  money,  and  when  they  were  indicted  for 
smuggling  four  hundred  and  fifteen  negroes  into  the 
United  States  and  killing  a  revenue  officer  who  sought 
to  get  evidence  against  them,  the  United  States  At 
torney  at  New  Orleans,  John  R.  Grymes,  resigned  his 
office  in  order  that  he  might  become  their  lawyer,  and 
Edward  Livingston  was  the  associate  counsel.  For 
a  time  they  escaped  punishment,  but  Commander 
Daniel  Tod  Patterson,  of  the  navy,  was  sent  against 

162 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

them  and  broke  up  their  establishment.  They  re 
organized  and  the  British  sought  their  co-operation 
in  the  campaign  against  New  Orleans.  Instead  of 
giving  it,  however,  they  furnished  valuable  military 
information  to  General  Jackson  and  asked  permis 
sion  to  join  his  army.  Some  twenty  or  thirty  of  them, 
accordingly,  worked  the  artillery  in  the  battle  of  New 
Orleans,  and  on  February  6,  1815,  were  pardoned  by 
the  President  for  their  past  offenses.  A  few  may  have 
become  good  citizens  afterward,  but  others  were  soon 
heard  of  again  at  Amelia  Island  in  the  St.  Mary's 
River,  off  the  coast  of  Florida,  and  at  Galveston 
Island,  off  the  coast  of  Texas,  where  establishments 
like  that  in  Barrataria  Bay  were  made. 

Galveston  Island  was  taken  possession  of  by  Louis 
de  Aury,  a  revolutionist  of  New  Grenada,  who  was 
appointed  Governor  of  Texas  and  Galveston  in  1816 
by  the  revolutionary  government  of  Mexico.  His 
ship  was  called  Mexico  Libre  and  sailed  under  the 
flags  of  Mexico  and  Venezuela.  His  followers  were 
described  as  ''the  refuse  of  all  nations  and  all  colors 
collected  from  the  mass  of  iniquity  spread  over  the 
islands  of  the  West  Indies  and  Spanish  America." 
Amelia  Island  was  seized  in  1817  by  Gregor  Mac- 
Gregor,  "Brigadier  General  of  the  armies  of  New 
Grenada  and  Venezuela  and  General-in-Chief  em 
ployed  to  liberate  the  Provinces  of  both  the  Floridas." 
He  was  a  character  somewhat  more  respectable  than 
Aury,  but  his  motives  were  the  same — to  gain  power 
and  wealth  for  himself.  Neither  the  South-American 
nor  the  Scotchman  cared  a  straw  for  South-American 
independence.  MacGregor  recruited  his  band  of 

163 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

some  one  hundred  and  fifty  men  chiefly  in  the  United 
States,  from  the  loafers  of  Savannah  and  Charleston, 
but  some  of  them  were  young  men  who  had  served 
in  the  war  and  joined  him  because  they  did  not  wish 
to  return  to  the  tame  pursuits  of  peace.  He  was 
financed  by  an  American  mercantile  firm,  to  whom 
he  promised  enormous  tracts  of  land  in  Florida  when 
his  independent  government  should  be  established. 
His  treasurer,  Irvin,  and  his  civil  governor,  Hub- 
bard,  were  Americans,  and  he  bought  his  supplies 
in  Georgia.  After  a  time  his  money  gave  out  and  his 
enterprise  was  about  to  collapse,  when  Aury  came 
over  from  Galveston  Island  and  took  command.  The 
game  then  became  too  low  for  the  Americans  and  they 
came  home.  Both  MacGregor  and  Aury  had  issued 
many  commissions  to  privateers,  which  fitted  out  in 
American  ports  and  made  Amelia  Island  their  head 
quarters.  Their  chief  business  was  intercepting  slave- 
vessels  bound  for  Havana  and  smuggling  the  slaves 
into  the  United  States.  They  preyed  upon  Spanish 
shipping  in  particular,  but  took  any  other  that  prom 
ised  profit.  Amelia  Island  was  claimed  as  American 
territory,  and  the  President  sent  a  land  and  naval 
force  against  it,  and  the  outlaws  were  driven  from 
both  islands.  These  were  the  earliest  of  a  long  line 
of  irregular  expeditions,  having  their  support  in  the 
United  States,  against  established  government  in 
Spanish-speaking  America.  Robbery  and  smuggling, 
which  were  the  only  objects  of  Lafitte,  and  the  chief 
objects  of  Aury,  and  in  part  the  objects  of  MacGregor, 
gave  way  to  a  preponderance  of  political  objects  in 
the  later  filibusters. 

164 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

The  West -Indian  waters  were  the  Hounslow  Heath 
of  the  sea,  and  there  were  many  routes  on  the  land 
also  where  the  traveler  was  in  danger  from  robbers. 
Where  the  temptation  is  there  the  crime  will  be  found, 
and  the  travel  of  men  with  merchandise  and  money 
in  small  companies,  or  alone,  through  uninhabited 
regions,  where  there  were  no  police,  offered  opportu 
nities  of  enrichment  which  highwaymen  did  not  neg 
lect.  There  was  no  collusion  with  them  on  the  part 
of  men  who  did  not  themselves  break  the  law,  as  there 
was  with  the  pirates,  and  nobody  profited  by  them 
except  the  keepers  of  the  brothels  and  receivers  of 
stolen  goods.  On  the  other  hand,  everybody  used  the 
highway,  so  there  was  general  and  cordial  co-operation 
to  apprehend  highwaymen.  Their  depredations  were 
infrequent  in  the  most  populous  parts  of  the  country; 
but  there  was  no  part  where  one  could  travel  far  with 
out  passing  through  regions  that  offered  good  places 
of  escape  to  a  robber.  In  the  South  were  large  tracts 
of  canebrake  and  swamp  where  he  could  take  refuge 
and  feel  secure.  The  borders  near  Spanish  or  Indian 
territory  were  favorite  places  for  the  outlaws.  Es 
caping  to  Spanish  jurisdiction,  they  were  more  apt  to 
be  welcomed  than  to  be  given  up,  and  nobody  cared 
to  follow  them  far  among  Indians.  They  were  taken 
usually  when  they  came  to  the  towns  to  spend  their 
money  and  to  pawn  the  watches  they  had  stolen. 
The  highway  yielded  a  rich  toll.  One  robber  before 
he  was  hanged  told  how  he  had  secured  thirty  thou 
sand  dollars  from  a  single  merchant  who  was  on  his 
way  to  the  market  to  buy  goods,  and  how  he  got 
ten  thousand  dollars  from  one  robbery  of  the  mail- 

165 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

stage.  In  the  mail  between  North  and  South  was 
much  paper  currency,  and  men  buying  and  selling 
slaves  were  provided  with  large  sums.  The  flow  of 
money  between  the  sections  of  the  country  was  very 
large. 

The  supreme  crime  of  the  highwayman  was  to  rob 
the  mail,  an  offense  against  federal  law  punishable 
by  death.  In  1830  George  M.  Dallas,  United  States 
Attorney  at  Philadelphia,  in  prosecuting  a  mail  rob 
ber  put  the  situation  truly. 

"In  no  country  on  the  globe,  perhaps,  is  the  mail 
exposed  to  greater  danger  than  in  this,"  he  said. 
"The  danger  arises  from  the  nature  of  our  country, 
its  vast  extent,  and  the  comparative  sparseness  of 
its  population.  We  are  on  the  threshold  of  a  bound 
less  and  unexplored  continent.  Some  of  our  mails 
travel  through  dark  and  dismal  forests  and  deserts, 
over  mighty  rivers,  through  gloomy  swamps,  and  on 
untenanted  mountains,  continually  incurring  all  kinds 
of  danger." 

There  was  strong  temptation  to  rob  in  the  cities, 
too,  for  the  watch  was  poor  and  the  streets  were 
dark  after  nightfall.  Footpads  were  common  and  it 
was  not  safe  to  walk  far  at  night.  Nearly  every  citi 
zen  carried  arms  for  his  protection,  however,  and  the 
criminal  stood  in  greater  fear  of  private  punishment 
than  he  did  of  the  city  police. 

When  we  consider  the  chronic  crimes  which  have 
always  afflicted  civilized  communities,  we  must  re 
member  that  there  was  no  large  criminal  class  in  the 
United  States,  there  being,  in  fact,  no  good  breeding- 
place  for  one.  Nowhere  was  there  a  dense  urban 

166 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

population;  nowhere  was  there  a  large  number  of 
people  sunk  in  poverty  and  vice  and  crime,  contam 
inating  one  another.  Individual  cases  of  poverty  and 
crime  because  of  it  were  common  enough,  but  poverty 
and  crime  were  not  propagated.  The  wayward  youth 
with  a  deformed  moral  nature  developed  his  criminal 
propensities,  and  weak  natures  succumbed  to  temp 
tation.  They  were  natural  products  and  society  was 
not  responsible  for  them.  On  the  other  hand,  while 
the  danger  of  criminal  contagion  was  absent  the  in 
dividual  developed  without  the  restraining  influence 
and  standardizing  of  conduct  which  come  from  the 
absorption  of  the  individual  by  the  group.  It  is 
probable  that  men  allowed  freer  play  to  their  pas 
sions  than  they  do  now  and  that  crimes  arising  from 
the  passions  were  more  common.  There  were  many 
illegitimate  births.  There  were  houses  of  immoral  re 
sort  in  the  country  districts,  where  they  do  not  now 
exist.  Many  foundlings  were  picked  up.  Heavy 
punishments  were  provided  for  the  mother  who  con 
cealed  the  death,  whether  by  natural  causes  or  not, 
of  her  bastard.  In  New  Hampshire  she  was  set  upon 
the  gallows  for  an  hour  and  then  imprisoned.  One 
of  the  most  atrocious  murders  of  the  day  was  that  of 
his  illegitimate  child  by  a  farmer  and  his  wife;  an 
other  was  that  of  his  wife  by  a  young  man  of  good 
family  connections  who  had  become  infatuated  with 
an  abandoned  woman. 

The  causes  of  murder  followed  familiar  lines — 
jealousy,  cupidity,  and  mad  passions  moved  men  to 
kill,  as  they  moved  Cain  when  he  killed  Abel,  and 
Eugene  Aram  when  he  killed  the  shoemaker  in  1745, 

167 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

and  Professor  Webster  when  he  killed  Dr.  Parkman 
in  1849.  There  was  a  dreadful  murder  in  1815  by 
a  young  man  in  Virginia,  who  robbed  his  victim  in 
order  to  get  money  to  enable  him  to  pay  a  gambling 
debt. 

As  we  have  seen  in  a  former  chapter,  foreigners 
generally  criticised  Americans  for  the  eagerness  with 
which  they  tried  to  make  money,  and  declared  that 
they  were  unscrupulous  in  the  methods  they  employed. 
In  plain  words  they  thought  them  cheats.  But  Amer- 
^icans  when  they  went  abroad  complained  that  they 
also  were  cheated.  It  would  seem,  in  fact,  that 
people  have  always  complained  of  being  cheated  by 
unfamiliar  methods.  We  had  in  America,  however, 
certain  phases  of  cheating  which  were  our  own.  The 
desire  to  get  rich  quickly  prompted  men  to  take 
gamblers'  chances,  and  there  were,  in  consequence, 
many  failures  and  bankruptcies  which  were  essen 
tially  dishonest.  There  was  a  certain  callousness 
toward  bankruptcy  which  did  not  exist  in  England, 
for  here  it  was  hardly  considered  a  disgrace.  It  was 
under  control  of  state  laws.  The  federal  government 
had  authority  to  regulate  it,  but  there  was  no  gen 
eral  bankruptcy  law  between  1803  and  1841.  The 
state  laws  treated  it  variously  and  too  leniently,  and 
speculators  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  they 
afforded  to  cheat  their  creditors. 

On  the  other  hand,  embezzlement  had  not  yet  be 
come  a  common  crime — indeed,  it  was  not  yet  a 
crime  at  all  in  many  of  the  states.  Punishment  and 
redress  could  be  accomplished  by  indirect  means, 
but  the  direct  crime  was  unknown  to  the  common 

168 


THE    CITY    PRISON,    OR    BRIDEWELL,    WEST    SIDE    CITY    HALL 


THE  DEBTORS'  PRISON,  SUBSEQUENTLY  THE  HALL  OF  RECORDS 


PIRATES  AND  DEBTORS 

law.  Nor  were  there  many  embezzlements.  Bank 
ers  and  their  clerks  sometimes  stole  other  people's 
money.  The  safeguards  to  prevent  breaches  of  trust 
were  not  elaborate  and  the  breaches  of  trust  were 
rare.  The  great  temptations  in  this  direction  arose 
at  a  later  day  with  the  coming  of  large  corporations 
and  central  storehouses  of  money. 

The  offense  of  running  into  debt  and  failing  to 
pay  was  punished  by  imprisonment.  The  insolvent 
debtor  could,  however,  obtain  relief  from  indefinite 
imprisonment  by  presenting  his  case  in  court.  Never 
theless,  there  were  prisons  for  debtors  in  the  larger 
cities,  and  in  the  towns  the  jails  generally  contained 
a  few  of  these  unfortunates.  There  was  much  popular 
sympathy  for  them,  and  often  it  took  the  practical 
form  of  a  subscription  to  pay  a  debtor's  creditors 
and  release  him.  Probably  the  debtor's  prison  at 
New  York  was  the  largest.  It  was  situated  on  the 
park  on  the  east  side  of  the  City  Hall,  nearly  adjoin 
ing  Chatham  Street,  and  was  a  small  stone  building 
of  three  stories.  It  was  open  to  visitors  all  day.  The 
prisoners  were  obliged  to  furnish  their  own  food  and 
the  Humane  Society  helped  those  who  were  unable 
to  do  so.  In  1817  there  were  thirty-four  men  and 
one  woman  in  the  jail  itself.  But  the  limits  of  the 
jail  extended  to  the  surrounding  country  and  em 
braced  about  one  hundred  and  sixty  acres.  Within 
this  area  lived  the  great  majority  of  the  debtors, 
who  furnished  security  against  their  escape,  which 
was  satisfactory  to  the  jailer,  and  paid  a  small  fee. 
There  were  between  five  and  six  hundred  of  these 
debtors.  In  spite  of  general  disapproval  of  impris- 

169 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

onment  for  debt,  it  was  allowed  to  stand  as  the 
law  until  New  York  led  the  way  for  abolishing  it 
in  1831. 

The  great  cause  of  debt,  as  it  was  of  other  crimes, 
was  indulgence  in  strong  drink. 


XVIII 

VICE 

AS  Bulwer  Lytton  said,  when  he  was  told  that 
/"\  loaded  dice  had  been  found  in  the  ruins  of 
Pompeii:  "Some  of  the  virtues  may  be  modern,  but 
all  the  vices  are  ancient."  l  Nevertheless,  some  vices 
are  practised  more  actively  by  one  generation  than 
they  are  by  another  and  become  in  a  sense  the  prop 
erty  of  that  generation.  It  cannot  be  claimed,  how 
ever,  that  the  vice  of  drunkenness  was  the  peculiar 
property  of  the  generation  of  1815.  Probably  there 
was  more  of  it  than  there  had  ever  been  before;  but 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  there  was  as  much  of  it 
as  there  was  a  generation  later.  However  this  may 
be,  it  was  a  time-dishonored  vice  and  impartial  ob 
servers  declared  that  it  was  the  besetting  sin  of  the 
Americans.  Men  were  hard  drinkers  everywhere; 
they  were  supposed  to  be  perpetually  athirst;  but 
the  best  that  could  be  said  for  Americans  was  that 
they  were  no  worse  in  this  respect  than  the  Irish,  who 
were  the  worst  in  the  world.  It  was  estimated  that 
they  spent  more  money  on  strong  drink  than  upon 
religion  and  education  combined.  The  head  of  a  well- 

*I  have  borrowed  this  quotation  from  an  official  opinion  writ 
ten  by  James  Brown  Scott  when  he  was  Solicitor  of  the  State 
Department. 

171 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

to-do  family  spent  hundreds  of  dollars  a  year  upon 
his  cellar,  and  a  part  of  nearly  every  man's  earnings 
went  for  strong  drink.  Soldiers,  sailors,  laborers, 
and  working-men  generally  drank  rum  or  whisky  regu 
larly  every  day.  It  was  even  served  to  the  prisoners 
in  the  jails.  There  were  many  men  who  took  a  dram 
every  morning  before  breakfast,  who  drank  through 
out  the  day,  and  took  a  " nightcap"  just  before  going 
to  bed.  They  were  partially  under  the  influence  of 
alcohol  all  the  time.  There  were  others  who  began 
drinking  in  the  afternoon  and  became  intoxicated 
every  day.  The  convivial  spirits  constituted  a  con 
siderable  proportion  of  the  population.  They  took 
pride  in  their  capacity  for  drinking  and  boasted  of 
the  amount  of  liquor  they  consumed.  The  Americans 
were  not  a  wine-drinking  people,  except  among  the 
opulent  class,  who  imported  the  wine.  There  was 
no  wine  of  the  country.  The  earlier  stages  of  ex 
tensive  agriculture  were  not  favorable  to  grape  cul 
ture  and  the  minute  care  necessary  to  make  wine. 
So  distilling  grain,  fruit,  or  molasses  was  resorted  to 
for  drink.  There  was  a  large  exchange  of  products 
with  the  West  Indies,  and  heavy  importations  of 
molasses,  which  was  made  into  rum,  the  liquor  most 
universally  used.  No  restriction  was  put  upon  dis 
tilling  and  the  product  was  not  taxed  until  after  the 
Constitution  went  into  effect,  when  the  imposition 
of  a  federal  tax  raised  a  rebellion  in  Pennsylvania, 
because  it  was  a  novelty  and  was  thought  to  be  an 
infringement  upon  a  right  which  the  farmers  had  al 
ways  enjoyed.  So,  with  ardent  spirits  accessible  to 
all,  many  became  addicted  to  their  use.  There  was 

172 


VICE 

a  general  complacency  toward  drinking.  A  drunkard 
was  held  in  contempt,  but  a  man  who  got  drunk  did 
not  incur  disgrace.  The  Literary  Messenger  and 
American  Register  of  Boston  in  the  March  number, 
1807,  had  some  humorous  paragraphs  on  "The  Mis 
eries  of  Social  Life,"  and  gave  this  as  one: 

On  entering  the  room  to  join  an  evening  party  composed  of 
remarkably  grave,  strict,  and  precise  persons,  suddenly  finding 
out  that  you  are  drunk;  and  what  is  still  worse,  that  the  company 
has  shared  with  you  in  the  discovery,  though  you  thought  you 
were,  and  fully  intended  to  be,  rigidly  sober. 

Even  at  funerals  spirits  were  served,  and  at  town 
meetings  the  most  sober  men  drank  at  the  taverns. 
Nobody  dreamed  of  absolutely  stopping  the  evil; 
to  mitigate  it  was  the  utmost  hope  of  the  reformers. 
Earnest  efforts  were  made  in  this  direction.  Ben 
jamin  Franklin  had  shown  the  folly  of  drinking,  and 
Dr.  Benjamin  Rush  treated  the  question  from  a  medi 
cal  standpoint  in  1784.  These  and  the  teachings  of 
other  wise  men  had  an  effect.  The  churches  battled 
with  the  evil,  but  the  outlook  was  not  encouraging. 

The  first  temperance  society  was  organized  near 
Saratoga  in  1808.  It  was  called  the  "Temperate 
Society,"  and  the  members  agreed  not  to  drink  rum, 
gin,  whisky,  or  wine,  under  a  penalty  of  twenty-five 
cents  for  each  offense,  except  at  public  dinners.  No 
member  should  become  intoxicated,  under  a  penalty 
of  fifty  cents.  One  of  the  members  who  had  a  farm 
and  was  in  the  lumber  business  related  how  it  had 
been  his  custom  to  buy  a  hogshead  of  rum  for  his 
laborers  each  year,  but,  since  he  had  embraced  the 
temperance  doctrine,  he  had  diminished  the  amount 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

materially.  He  found  it  necessary,  however,  to  pro 
vide  liquor  for  some  of  his  laborers,  who  would  not 
work  for  him  unless  he  did  so.  A  temperance  society 
appeared  in  Massachusetts  in  1813.  There  was  one 
at  Morristown  in  1825,  each  member  of  which  pledged 
himself  not  to  drink  more  than  a  pint  of  apple-jack 
a  day,  a  quart  having  been  the  allowance  up  to  that 
time.  The  Methodist  Church  directed  its  efforts  to 
preventing  its  ministers  from  distilling  and  selling 
liquor.  It  was  not  till  1836  that  the  efforts  for  re 
form  became  a  crusade  for  total  abstinence.  Then 
it  was  that  strong  drink  was  banished  from  use  in 
the  family  and  at  social  entertainments,  from  the 
workshop  and  the  harvest  field,  and  that  there  ap 
peared,  as  a  consequence,  innumerable  tippling  houses 
or  saloons,  the  offspring,  as  the  recorder  of  the  move 
ment  has  stated,  "of  the  American  temperance  refor 
mation."  Afterward  serious  attention  was  given  to 
the  question  of  invoking  the  law  to  enforce  temperance 
or  total  abstinence.  James  Appleton  made  a  report 
on  the  subject  to  the  Maine  legislature  in  1837,  and 
Neal  Dow  passed  his  law  in  1851.  In  1840  the 
"Washingtonian  movement"  began  in  Baltimore. 
Three  reformed  drunkards  got  other  drunkards  to 
reform  and  sign  a  pledge  not  to  drink.  They  got 
others;  the  practice  spread,  and  the  whole  country 
was  ablaze  with  oratory  from  men  who  related  their 
experiences  when  they  were  slaves  to  their  appetites. 
We  are  told  that  there  was  at  one  time  600,000  of 
these  reformed  drunkards.  Most  of  them  returned 
to  their  bondage  after  the  novelty  of  virtue  had  worn 
off.  There  was  no  such  thing  as  an  inebriate-asylum 

174 


VICE 

in  the  world  till  that  at  Binghamton,  New  York,  was 
opened,  the  corner-stone  being  laid  in  1858. 

But  the  work  of  the  country  was  not  done  by  the 
drunkards  in  1815  any  more  than  it  has  been  since. 
Probably  there  were  fewer  drunkards  in  public  life 
than  there  were  at  a  later  period,  because  the  pub 
lic  officials  came  in  the  main  from  a  more  refined 
class. 

Going  along  with  the  drunkenness,  the  two  being 
the  chief  vices  of  the  time,  was  the  vice  of  gambling, 
which  had  the  sanction  of  the  law  everywhere  to  the 
extent  of  the  lottery,  which  had  been  a  favorite  mode 
of  raising  money  from  colonial  days  and  was  regularly 
invoked  by  the  Continental  Congress  to  prop  up  the 
tottering  finances  of  the  country.  Afterward  it  was 
used  by  the  states  for  all  sorts  of  purposes — to  build 
churches,  schools,  hospitals,  and  roads.  It  was  such 
an  easy  and  certain  mode  of  raising  money  that  it 
continued  to  be  resorted  to  even  after  its  demoraliz 
ing  influences  were  generally  admitted.  It  was  rea 
soned  that  it  did  public  good  even  if  it  worked  private 
harm.  It  was  the  poor  people  especially  who  sup 
ported  it,  instead  of  saving  their  surplus.  It  was  an 
tagonistic  to  habits  of  saving.  In  1833  a  society  was 
organized  in  Pennsylvania  to  advocate  its  suppression. 
Public  opinion  indorsed  the  movement.  Soon  official 
lotteries  ceased;  then  all  were  forbidden  by  law. 

That  form  of  gambling  which  was  practised  by 
more  people  than  any  other,  except  the  lottery,  was 
betting  on  horse-races,  and  everywhere  in  the  country 
to  a  greater  or  less  degree  horse-racing  was  indulged 
in.  It  was  not  lawful  in  New  England,  nor  in  New 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

York  between  the  years  1802  and  1821,  and  was  put 
under  the  ban  in  Pennsylvania  in  1820;  but  nothing 
could  prevent  horse-lovers  from  testing  the  speed  of 
their  horses,  or  stop  emulation  among  them,  and 
where  there  were  no  tracks  there  were  races  along  the 
road  or  scratch  races  before  the  taverns. 

In  New  England  running-races  never  became  popu 
lar,  and  the  interest  in  horse-breeding  was  not  so 
strong  as  it  was  in  the  other  parts  of  the  country, 
but  it  was  there,  especially,  that  the  trotting-horse 
was  developed.  In  1810  a  Boston  horse  astonished 
the  country  by  trotting  a  mile  in  less  than  three  min 
utes  at  Philadelphia.  The  line  of  trotters  did  not  be 
gin  till  1824,  however,  when  Trouble  went  a  mile  in 
2 143 .  The  races  were  usually  under  saddle,  but  in 
1810  a  light  two -wheeled  sulky  was  experimented 
with  and  soon  afterward  races  were  trotted  under 
conditions  similar  to  those  which  now  prevail,  but 
the  distances  were  usually  two  or  three  miles. 

There  was  no  interest  which  so  much  pervaded  all 
classes  and  all  sections  as  the  interest  in  horses. 
Every  one  had  to  notice  them,  whether  he  had  a  nat 
ural  liking  for  them  or  not.  They  carried  him  wher 
ever  he  went ;  he  was  absolutely  -  dependent  upon 
them  for  a  hundred  necessary  purposes.  It  was 
deemed  a  quality  of  manliness  to  ride  and  control 
a  horse  well.  The  idea  of  a  gallant  and  admirable 
man  was  a  man  on  horseback.  No  one  described 
the  attributes  of  a  noted  individual  without  speaking 
of  his  abilities  as  a  horseman.  Even  President  Madi 
son,  although  a  man  of  sedentary  tastes  and  without 
any  fondness  for  sports,  had  a  fine  stallion  on  his  farm 

176 


VICE 

in  Virginia,  and  owned  an  interest  in  a  race  -  horse 
with  Dr.  Thornton. 

While  the  home  of  the  race-horse  was  Virginia,  the 
whole  South  and  Southwest,  and  to  a  less  extent 
the  Middle  States,  were  breeding  horses  from  English 
and  Virginia  stock.  As  it  happened,  the  greatest* 
horse  in  the  country,  Messenger,  was  owned  in  New 
York.  He  died  in  1808  at  Townsend  Cock's  stable 
on  Long  Island.  The  greatest  race  of  the  generation 
was  that  between  American  Eclipse,  a  New  York 
horse,  against  Sir  Henry,  a  Southern  horse.  It  took 
place  in  1823  on  the  Long  Island  course,  and  it  was 
estimated  that  one  hundred  thousand  people  saw 
Eclipse  win.  Everybody  knew  the  names  of  the  great 
horses ;  everybody  took  an  interest  in  the  great  races ; 
and  thousands  of  people  bet  on  them  who  did  not 
bet  on  other  events.  The  country  storekeeper,  who 
acted  in  some  sort  as  the  banker  for  his  patrons, 
would  sometimes  advance  the  stakes  on  a  race  to  a 
customer,  receiving  his  payment  in  produce  delivered 
from  time  to  time.  When  Messenger  died  every  hu 
man  being  in  the  United  States  knew  it  who  was  old 
enough  to  know  anything.  It  was  regarded  as  a 
national  calamity.  He  was  given  a  military  funeral 
and  volleys  of  musketry  were  fired  over  his  grave. 

The  oldest  track  in  the  country  was  the  Washington 
course  near  Charleston,  where  races  took  place  every 
year  in  the  latter  part  of  February.  Beginning  on 
Wednesday,  they  lasted  for  the  rest  of  the  week,  and 
on  Friday  night  the  great  jockey-club  ball  took  place. 
The  races  were  free,  a  stand  was  provided  for  the 
common  people,  and  there  were  special  accommo- 
12  177 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

dations  for  ladies.  The  schools  were  closed  so  that 
the  pupils  might  go.  The  whole  population  gathered 
at  the  course,  and  many  visitors  came  from  other 
states.  At  a  race  meeting  there  were  not  many  races 
in  a  day,  and  not  many  horses  entered  a  race.  In 
fact,  there  were  few  horses  which  were  capable  of 
the  severe  test  that  a  race  put  upon  them.  The  dis 
tances  were  two,  three,  or  four  miles  in  heats.  The 
principal  event  was  usually  a  four-mile  race,  and  it 
often  happened  that  the  best  horses  would  run  twelve 
miles  before  one  of  them  had  won.  The  great  quali 
ties  they  exhibited  can  be  appreciated  when  the 
time  they  took  to  cover  the  course  is  considered,  for 
they  ran  the  third  heat  almost  as  fast  as  they  did  the 
first.  Taking  the  time  from  a  race  in  1811  at  Charles 
ton,  the  first  heat  was  run  in  eight  minutes  and  four 
teen  seconds,  the  second  in  eight  minutes  and  two 
seconds,  and  the  third  in  eight  minutes  and  thirteen 
seconds — which  was  not  considered  notably  fast  going. 
There  was  no  regular  circuit  racing.  The  meets,  ex 
cept  at  Charleston,  were  not  at  stated  periods,  but 
took  place  as  the  result  of  the  challenge  of  one  horse- 
owner  by  another.  Thus,  the  Richmond  Enquirer  for 
March  25,  1815,  announced  that  a  match  race  would 
take  place  at  New  Market  (Petersburg)  on  April  27th, 
between  James  J.  Harrison's  horse  by  Sir  Archy 
against  Abner  Robinson's  Optimus  for  a  purse  of 
five  thousand  dollars,  in  heats  of  two  miles,  best  two 
in  three.  On  the  following  day,  for  a  purse  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  there  would  be  a  race  under 
the  same  conditions  open  to  any  nag.  The  advertise 
ment  was  inserted  by  a  tavern-keeper  who  offered  to 

178 


VICE 

reserve  accommodations  for  gentlemen  with  their 
servants  and  horses,  who  intended  to  come  to  the 
races.  The  sectional  rivalry  showed  itself  in  the 
races.  The  localities  from  which  the  horses  came 
were  laid  stress  upon  and  called  forth  demonstrations 
of  local  pride.  In  1806  there  was  a  great  race  at 
Washington,  D.  C.,  in  which  horses  from  Maryland, 
Virginia,  Pennsylvania,  and  New  Jersey  took  part.  It 
was  looked  upon  as  a  contest  for  supremacy^etween 
four  states. 

ts' 

Let  no  one  who  has  seen  a  professional  horse-race 
of  the  present  day  suppose  that  it  gives  him  an  ade 
quate  idea  of  the  course  a  hundred  years  ago.  The 
colts  which  sprint  a  few  hundred  yards  and  cannot 
maintain  a  racing  speed  for  a  full  mile  are  poor  imi 
tations  of  the  horses  which  used  to  circle  the  track 
four  times,  take  a  rest  of  half  an  hour,  do  it  again 
and  then  again.  The  old  racing  demonstrated  all  the 
fine  qualities  of  the  horse,  and  the  modern  racing  is 
his  degradation.  The  sport  which  was  under  the  con 
trol  of  horsemen  who  gambled  has  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  gamblers  who  race.  They  know  nothing 
about  horses,  and  few  of  them  can  ride.  To  them  the 
race-track  is  only  a  great  roulette- wheel  and  the  horses 
only  expensive  balls.  The  elements  of  the  crowd 
have  changed.  A  few  rich  idlers,  a  large  number  of 
professional  gamblers  who  systematically  follow  the 
races  from  place  to  place,  men  from  the  streets  who 
like  to  gamble  when  they  can,  all  transported  to  the 
meeting  in  trolley-cars  and  automobiles  —  by  any 
other  means  than  horses — have  taken  the  place  of 
the  indiscriminate  gatherings  of  earlier  days,  when 

179 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

lawyers,  doctors,  even  a  few  clergymen,  farmers,  rich 
and  poor,  public  officials,  clerks,  apprentices,  small 
shopkeepers,  horse- traders,  and  blacklegs  came  to 
gether,  impelled  by  a  common  interest.  We  have 
lived  to  see  editorials  written  on  the  "Passing  of  the 
Horse."  Many  years  ago  he  ceased  to  have  any  use 
fulness  for  purposes  of  travel.  A  machine-driven  car 
is  now  supplanting  him  for  city  and  suburban  pur 
poses  also.  He  is  even  being  pushed  off  the  country 
roads.  He  is  rapidly  becoming  only  the  drudge  of 
the  farm.  It  is  true  that  he  lingers  as  a  toy  of  rich 
men,  but  they  will  soon  discard  him,  because  he  has 
no  basis  of  usefulness  to  them.  The  children  hav^ 
been  born  who  must  live  their  lives  without  an  in 
terest  which  has  been  the  concern  of  mankind  since 
before  the  days  of  Job,  and  has  influenced  the  minds 
and  characters  of  many  millions  of  men.  The  deep- 
reaching  changes  which  modern  inventions  are  mak 
ing  have  a  remarkable  illustration,  the  full  significance 
of  which  we  cannot  fathom,  in  the  elimination  of  the 
interest  in  horses. 

Many  of  those  who  were  the  victims  of  the  passion 
for  horse-racing  also  found  a  means  of  combining 
gambling  and  sport  by  following  the  ancient  amuse 
ment  of  cock-fighting.  Here,  as  in  horse-racing,  Vir 
ginia  was  the  pioneer,  but  the  pit  which  was  most 
steadily  in  use  was  that  at  New  Orleans,  which,  hav 
ing  been  a  Spanish  town,  had  retained  the  taste  for  a 
sport  in  which  Spaniards  have  ever  taken  peculiar  de 
light.  In  Maryland,  however,  there  was  much  cock- 
fighting,  and  to  a  less  degree  it  prevailed  through 
out  the  country.  The  most  important  mains  were 

180 


VICE 

those  fought  by  the  cocks  of  one  locality  against 
those  of  another.  The  law  did  not  notice  the  sport 
particularly,  and  it  was  not  considered  an  evil,  ex 
cept  in  New  England,  where  all  games  were  deemed 
to  be  sinful. 

Nor  had  the  law  as  yet  need  to  notice  the  fighting 
of  men  in  a  ring  before  spectators  for  stakes.  Such 
fights  occurred,  but  there  were  no  elaborate  prepara 
tions  or  advertisement,  and  the  general  public  took 
no  notice  of  them.  A  good  fighter  became  known  to 
other  ruffians,  but  there  was  no  recognized  champion 
American  pugilist.  A  negro  from  Georgetown,  D.  C., 
named  Molineaux,  appeared  in  England  in  1810  and 
claimed  the  title.  His  boasts  were  believed  and  he 
fought  with  some  success;  but  very  few  people  had 
heard  of  him  in  America.  The  first  ring  fight  under 
rules  was  fought  in  1816  between  Jacob  Hyer  and  Tom 
Beasley;  but  it  would  never  have  been  remembered 
if  it  had  not  been  that  Jacob  Hyer  had  a  son  named 
Tom  who  became  the  first  champion  prize-fighter  of 
the  American  ring  some  twenty-five  years  later,  and 
his  fame  was  so  great  that  his  father's  exploits  were 
recalled. 

But  the  gambling  spirit  which  found  an  outlet  in 
betting  at  sports  more  or  less  coarse  and  cruel  also 
sought  simpler  and  more  direct  means  of  satisfaction. 
Accordingly,  there  was  much  card  -  playing,  dice- 
throwing,  billiard-playing,  and  table-gaming,  and  es 
tablishments  were  provided  where  men  who  de 
manded  facilities  for  ruining  themselves  could  be 
supplied  with  everything  that  was  necessary  for  the 
purpose.  Unhappily,  the  universal  custom  of  marry- 

181 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

ing  early  caused  suffering  and  hardship  to  innocent 
wives  and  children  of  the  wretches  who  gambled 
away  their  substance  and  died  in  their  youth  among 
the  unclean.  The  evils  of  gambling  had  become  acute, 
and  there  was  an  outcry  against  it.  In  this  year 
old  Parson  Weems,  still  calling  himself  the  former 
rector  of  Mt.  Vernon  Parish  (which  he  had  never 
been,  for  there  never  was  such  a  parish),  issued  a 
pamphlet  in  Baltimore  in  which  he  depicted  in  lurid, 
but  not  exaggerated,  colors  the  horrors  which  re 
sulted  from  gambling.  There  were  many  other  writ 
ings  to  the  same  effect.  Hardly  any  one  dared  to 
defend  gambling.  In  all  the  states  except  Louisiana 
gambling-houses  were  forbidden  by  law.  Neverthe 
less,  they  flourished  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  through 
out  the  country.  At  the  summer  resorts,  especially 
the  springs  of  Virginia,  there  was  gambling  during 
the  season.  Games  were  found  wherever  there  were 
race  meetings.  The  round  or  banking  games  were 
the  same  as  those  which  now  prevail,  but  the  names 
of  some  of  them  have  probably  been  changed.  There 
was  roulette,  "the  wheel  of  fortune,"  "black  and 
red,"  "equality,"  "E.  O.,"  and  "A.  B.  C.,"  but  the 
favorite  game  was  faro.  A  certain  "Major"  Robert 
Bailey  flourished  at  this  time,  and  after  he  had  run 
his  race  and  ruined  himself  a  number  of  times  and 
dragged  others  down  with  him  he  wrote  an  interest 
ing  account  of  his  career.  He  kept  a  faro-bank  at 
the  Sweet  Springs  and  the  Berkeley  Springs  in  Vir 
ginia,  where  he  had  a  large  and  profitable  patronage. 
At  the  Berkeley  Springs  he  had  a  boarding-house  or 
hotel,  over  which  he  and  his  handsome  mistress  pre- 
182 


VICE 

sided,  where  the  cuisine  was  excellent  and  the  drinks 
were  mixed  by  an  expert  whom  he  had  brought  from 
Philadelphia.  His  guests  included  foreign  diplomats, 
people  of  fashion,  and  profligates  young  and  old.  He 
went  to  Philadelphia,  where,  in  a  room  in  the  Mansion 
House  Hotel,  he  fleeced  his  visitors  at  faro.  When 
he  was  in  Washington  he  lived  at  O'Neill's  and  must 
have  enjoyed  an  acquaintance  with  the  future  Mrs. 
Eaton.  He  consorted  with  men  of  fashion,  as  the 
list  of  his  creditors  when  he  went  into  bankruptcy 
shows. 

In  Richmond  there  was  Mr.  Strass  (or  perhaps 
Strauss),  who  had  a  gambling-resort  which  was  well 
patronized.  He  provided  a  good  dinner  for  his  guests, 
who  paid  for  it  indirectly.  Some  of  the  inveterate 
gamblers  of  the  town  dined  with  him  every  day.  A 
novice  entering  his  rooms  was  surprised  at  some  of 
the  people  he  met  there,  for  among  them  were  citi 
zens  of  high  standing  and  seemingly  respectable  lives 
— solid  family  men,  church  members — evening  wolves 
who  walked  the  streets  by  daylight  clad  in  the  garb 
of  innocent  sheep. 

There  was  a  vice  of  the  day  which  we  do  not  call 
a  vice.  To  break  the  piety  of  the  Sabbath  by  fol 
lowing  amusement  or  doing  work  was  considered  to 
be  a  wicked  and  a  vicious  act.  The  observance  of 
the  day  was  the  care  of  the  law.  It  was  supported 
by  the  argument  that  Sunday  as  a  day  of  rest  was  a 
necessary  civil  institution,  but  the  law  was  made  for 
religious  purposes  and  had  its  basis  in  the  Fourth 
Commandment.  An  ominous  revolt  against  the  ex 
treme  features  had  arisen  and  received  encourage- 

183 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

ment  from  the  federal  government.  The  post-offices 
in  the  larger  towns,  to  accommodate  their  patrons, 
fell  into  the  way  of  opening  their  doors  for  a  time  on 
Sunday  to  receive  and  deliver  mail.  In  1810  Con 
gress  passed  a  law  requiring  postmasters  to  deliver 
mail  every  day  in  the  week.  There  must  have  been 
a  wide-spread  demand  for  this  innovation ;  but  in  the 
nature  of  things  it  was  not  as  loud  and  clamorous  as 
the  voice  of  the  opposition,  which  expressed  a  con 
viction  that  one  of  the  most  sacred  and  essential  of 
divine  institutions  was  being  assailed.  The  cry  went 
up  that  the  morals  of  the  country  were  being  ruined. 
Petitions  poured  in  upon  Congress  to  repeal  the  law. 
They  came  by  the  hundreds  from  New  England  and 
by  scores  from  the  rest  of  the  country.  The  denom 
inations  forgot  their  differences  and  spoke  in  concert 
against  the  impious  innovation.  The  petitions  were 
alike  in  tenor.  "That  the  Sabbath,"  said  one  from 
Fannettsburg,  Pennsylvania,  in  1815,  "according  to 
their  [the  petitioners']  belief  is  an  ordinance  of  God, 
instituted  from  the  beginning  of  the  world,  and  always 
regarded  by  believers  in  revelation  as  a  blessing," 
etc.  The  conscientious  observance  of  the  day,  said 
another  from  the  West,  "constitutes  one  of  the  best 
foundations  of  the  virtue  and  happiness  of  any  people." 
One  argument  against  the  law  was  that  it  conflicted 
with  state  laws  which  forbade  such  labor  as  the  de 
livery  of  the  mail  required.  The  battle  raged  for 
years;  the  archives  of  both  Houses  of  Congress  are 
loaded  with  the  petitions,  and  several  good  reports 
were  made  upholding  the  American  doctrine  of  free 
dom  in  religious  observances.  The  enemies  of  the 

184 


VICE 

law  feared,  with  reason,  that  it  would  prove  to  be 
an  opening  wedge  in  breaking  up  the  perfect  quiet 
and  inaction  on  Sunday  which  they  wished  to  main 
tain. 

Still,  the  quiet  and  inaction  prevailed  to  a  notable 
degree  everywhere  in  the  country;  but  in  New  Eng 
land  it  assumed  an  extreme  of  solemnity  which  made 
Sunday  the  most  disagreeable  day  of  the  week.  De 
Tocqueville  gives  us  a  description  of  a  New  England 
city  on  Sunday,  which  might  be  applied  in  a  less  de 
gree  to  all  the  cities  in  the  country  except  the  for 
eign  city  of  New  Orleans.  He  said  that  all  social 
movements  began  to  be  suspended  on  Saturday  even 
ing.  The  streets  were  in  solitude  and  silence.  Chains 
hung  across  them  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  churches. 
The  shutters  of  the  houses  were  half  closed.  Now 
and  then  a  solitary  individual  glided  silently  along 
the  deserted  streets  and  lanes.  The  city  seemed  to 
be  dead.  On  Monday  morning,  at  early  dawn,  the 
rolling  of  carriages  was  heard,  the  noise  of  hammers, 
the  hum  of  a  busy  population.  The  city  was  alive. 
In  Massachusetts  the  law  of  1792,  confirmed  in  1816, 
forbade  not  only  all  working,  but  all  games  and  rec 
reation,  and  decreed  that  no  one  should  travel,  no 
ship  leave  the  harbor,  no  one  lounge  at  the  tavern, 
and  that  any  person  in  health  who  without  suffi 
cient  reason  should  omit  to  worship  God  in  public 
for  a  space  of  three  months  should  be  fined.  No 
hackney  carriage  could  drive  into  Boston  or  leave 
the  town  on  Sunday,  unless  the  driver  had  a  certifi 
cate  of  permission  from  a  justice  of  the  peace.  There 
was  some  laxity  in  enforcing  the  law,  and  in  1814 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

complaints  were  made  to  the  legislature,  which  passed 
resolutions  advising  all  ministers  to  read  the  laws  on 
the  subject  of  Sabbath  observance  to  their  congre 
gations  and  to  preach  to  them  on  the  subject  of  obey 
ing  them.  A  society  was  formed  "for  the  suppres 
sion  of  vice  in  general  and  particularly  of  profanity, 
intemperance,  and  the  profanation  of  the  Lord's  day." 
It  met  at  Burlington,  Middlesex  County,  in  1814,  and 
took  into  consideration  especially  the  increasing  vio 
lation  of  law  by  traveling  on  Sunday.  Steps  must 
be  taken  to  punish  the  violators,  so  that  the  people 
might  continue  to  enjoy  the  Sabbath  "in  the  same 
uninterrupted  quiet  and  solemn  stillness  as  the  fathers 
of  New  England  enjoyed  it."  The  law  must  be  in 
voked.  "Vice  may  be  bold  and  clamorous,"  said 
the  association,  "when  opposed  only  with  timidity, 
but  will  at  once  shrink  from  the  grasp  of  loyal  au 
thority  sanctioned  by  public  opinion,"  and  as  re 
ligious  observances  on  the  Sabbath  were  "more  effec 
tive  in  restraining  vice  and  enforcing  moral  duties 
than  civil  laws,"  it  was  the  duty  of  the  state  to  guard 
over  them.  What  was  the  custom  in  Massachusetts 
was  the  custom  in  all  New  England.  Perhaps  the 
Sabbath  was  even  more  severely  observed  in  Connec 
ticut  than  it  was  in  Massachusetts.  The  day  in  New 
York  was  a  little  freer,  but  in  Pennsylvania  it  was 
solemn  enough  to  suit  the  strictest.  In  the  South 
the  customs  were  less  severe,  but  everywhere  the  day 
was  set  aside  for  religious  observance,  rest,  and  ab 
stinence  from  amusements. 

Somewhat  akin  to  the  vice  of  Sabbath-breaking 
was  the  vice  of  swearing  and  blaspheming  which  was 

186 


VICE 

in  offense  against  the  divine  command  exclusively. 
\11  the  states  had  laws  on  the  subject,  but  they  did 
lot  enforce  them.  The  habit  of  swearing  was  well- 
ligh  universal  and  went  unrestrained ;  but  blasphemy 
tfould  have  been  punished  if  there  had  been  occasion 
:or  it.  The  law  of  Maryland,  passed  in  1793  and 
adopted  by  Congress  as  the  law  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  may'be  cited  as  an  example  of  the  extreme 
iiorror  of  blasphemy  which  the  community  felt.  It  was 
in  force  in  1815,  but  nobody  was  tried  under  it.  It 
provided  that  any  one  who  should  blaspheme  or  curse 
God,  or  deny  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ  to  be  the  Son 
of  God,  or  should  deny  the  Holy  Trinity,  the  Father, 
3on,  and  Holy  Ghost,  or  the  Godhead  of  any  of  the 
three  persons,  or  the  unity  of  the  Godhead,  should 
for  the  first  offense  "be  bored  through  the  tongue 
and  fined  twenty  pounds,"  and  for  the  second  offense 
be  branded  on  the  forehead  with  the  letter  B  and 
fined  forty  pounds,  and  for  the  third  offense  suffer 
death. 


XIX 

THE   WICKED 

WHEN  a  person  was  arrested  in  1815  for  vio 
lating  the  law  he  was  confined  in  the  county 
jail,  the  state's  prison,  or  the  penitentiary.  He  fared 
badly  in  any  one  of  them.  Even  if  he  entered  prison 
with  a  gentle  heart  and  virtuous  desires  he  came  out 
a  hard  criminal  and  an  enemy  of  society.  Some  of 
the  prisons  were  dirty,  and  some  were  clean ;  some  were 
lighted  and  ventilated,  and  others  were  not ;  some  had 
humane  masters,  and  the  keepers  of  others  were  brutes ; 
but  in  all  of  them  the  criminals  were  confined  indis 
criminately,  young  and  old,  the  most  abandoned  with 
the  most  hopeful,  youths  fourteen  years  old  with 
patriarchs  of  crime,  the  suspected  with  the  convicted, 
misdemeanants  with  felons,  debtors  with  murderers. 
Classification  had  not  yet  been  undertaken.  There 
were  six,  twenty,  even  thirty  prisoners  in  a  cell.  In 
some  prisons  they  worked;  in  most  they  did  not,  but 
idled  away  their  days,  told  vicious  stories  and  con 
cocted  further  crimes.  Liquor  was  served  with  ra 
tions  in  some  prisons;  it  was  purchasable  in  all.  The 
prisons  were,  in  fact,  seminaries  of  crime. 

But  the  penitentiary  system  had  been  established. 
Imprisonment  had  been  substituted  for  more  acute 
suffering  as  punishment  after  conviction.  It  was 

188 


THE  WICKED 

Dased  upon  the  expectation  that  it  would  not  only 
ieter  from  the  commission  of  crime,  but  would  re- 
:'orm  the  criminal  and  turn  him  into  a  useful  citizen. 
Fhe  penitentiary  at  Philadelphia  was  the  first  one 
established,  and  Pennsylvania  was  the  mother  of  a 
reform  which  stands  as  one  of  the  milestones  to  mark 
:he  progress  of  civilization.  William  Penn  had  sub 
stituted  imprisonment  and  labor  for  the  death-penalty 
n  the  early  days  of  the  colony,  but  the  English  gov 
ernment  had  disapproved  the  change  and  ordered  a 
return  to  the  sanguinary  punishments  of  the  common 
[aw.  After  independence  the  state  revived  its  plan, 
[t  suited  the  Christian  spirit  of  the  Quakers.  Ed 
ward  Livingston  in  his  work  on  criminal  jurispru 
dence  said  of  them: 

In  every  society  for  promoting  education,  for  instructing  or 
supporting  the  poor,  for  relieving  the  distresses  of  prisoners,  for 
suppressing  vice  and  immorality,  they  are  active  and  zealous 
members;  and  they  indemnify  themselves  for  the  loss  of  the  hon 
ours  and  pleasures  of  the  world  by  the  highest  of  all  honours, 
the  purest  of  all  pleasures — that  of  doing  good. 

So  in  Pennsylvania  capital  punishment  could  be 
inflicted  only  upon  those  who  were  found  guilty  of 
murder  and  treason,  and  the  branding-iron  and  stripes 
had  disappeared  from  the  criminal  law.  In  1790  the 
penitentiary  was  built  and  the  cellular  system  intro 
duced.  Each  prisoner  was  confined  alone;  he  could 
not  contaminate  or  be  contaminated;  if  he  did  not 
reform  he  did  not  corrupt.  But  it  was  confidently 
believed  that  he  would  reform,  and  for  the  three  years 
the  system  had  prevailed  the  results  had  been  prom 
ising.  Unfortunately,  the  penitentiary  became  crowded 

189 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

and  solitary  confinement  was  abandoned.  The  prison 
then  became  no  better  than  any  other.  Upon  the 
revival  of  the  original  plan  humanitarians  pinned  their 
hopes. 

The  other  states  had  followed  Pennsylvania  in  put 
ting  up  penitentiaries  and  accepting  the  humane 
principle  they  stood  for,  but  none  of  them  had  as  yet 
a  system  of  solitary  confinement.  A  penitentiary  at 
New  York  was  built  in  1796,  at  Richmond  in  1800, 
at  Charlestown,  Massachusetts,  in  1804,  at  Wind 
sor,  Vermont,  in  1808,  at  Baltimore  in  1811,  at  Cin 
cinnati  in  1816.  Connecticut  had  modernized  the  old 
prison  at  the  Simsbury  copper-mines.  By  1821  four 
teen  of  the  states  had  penitentiaries.  But  the  public 
was  asking,  where  were  the  reformed  criminals?  In 
truth,  there  were  none,  and  it  was  plain  that  the  new 
system  had  failed  to  produce  any.  In  consequence, 
a  serious  sentiment  began  to  manifest  itself  in  favor 
of  returning  to  the  old  way — of  increasing  the  list  of 
capital  crimes,  of  inflicting  personal  cruelty  in  pub 
lic,  of  making  the  criminal  law  a  pitiless  and  terrify 
ing  master  to  the  wrong-doer  instead  of  a  firm  but 
merciful  parent.  Against  this  reaction  the  gentler 
spirits  of  the  time  contended  resolutely.  They  in 
sisted  that  cruel  punishments  did  not  deter  from 
crime  as  effectively  as  milder  punishments  did;  that 
they  aroused  feelings  of  rebellion  against  the  law  and 
of  hatred  and  revenge  in  the  criminal  himself  and  in 
those  who  from  similar  education  and  association 
sympathized  with  him;  that  the  experience  of  a 
thousand  years  had  shown  that  crimes  had  been 
most  common  when  the  laws  against  them  had  been 

190 


EDWARD     LIVINGSTON,    AUTHOR    OF    THE    CRIMINAL     CODE    FOR 

LOUISIANA 
From  a  painting  which  hangs  in  Whig  Hall  Princeton  University 


THE  WICKED 

nost  severe.  Besides,  the  infliction  of  cruel  punish- 
nent  brutalized  society.  It  could  not  see  its  agents 
ict  a  cruel  part  under  its  orders  without  itself  being 
legraded.  To  these  arguments  the  merciful  doc- 
;rines  of  the  New  Testament  were  always  added, 
md  always  with  effect  upon  a  population  which 
vas  composed  almost  entirely  of  zealous  Christians. 
Various  organizations  were  formed  to  relieve  the  mis 
eries  of  ill-treated  prisoners;  but  a  part  of  their 
>ropaganda  was  always  advocacy  of  the  penitentiary 
iystem.  The  individual  writers  and  workers  had  the 
;ame  objects.  The  Society  for  Alleviating  the  Mis 
eries  of  Public  Prisons  in  Philadelphia,  the  Massa 
chusetts  Society  for  Prison  Discipline,  the  Society 
'or  the  Prevention  of  Pauperism  in  New  York,  and 
Daleb  Lowndes,  a  Quaker  writer,  Mathew  Carey  and 
Sdward  Livingston,  with  many  others,  worked  with 
;he  same  purpose.  The  great  hope  which  they  never 
ost  sight  of  and  never  lost  faith  in  was  that  a  way 
;vould  be  found  of  reclaiming  the  criminal.  In  the 
:ace  of  poor  facilities  for  experimentation,  and  even 
)f  failure  of  experiments  when  the  facilities  were  good, 
:hey  never  ceased  to  believe  in  the  innate  nobleness 
}f  man,  and  to  prosecute  the  search  for  the  method 
3y  which  the  germ  of  virtue  which  lay  in  the  nature 
3f  every  man  might  be  developed,  and  the  criminal 
transformed  into  a  man  of  rectitude  and  self-respect. 
They  were  not,  generally  speaking,  under  delusions 
with  respect  to  the  duty  of  society  to  itself  as  well 
as  to  its  enemies.  Their  great  hope  at  this  time  was 
in  solitary  confinement,  and  they  wished  to  give  it 
a  fair  trial,  although  they  knew  that  it  was  a  terrible 

191 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

punishment.  In  1816  the  state  of  New  York,  fol 
lowing  the  Pennsylvania  system  of  1790,  built  the 
prison  at  Auburn.  The  prisoners  were  not  allowed 
to  see  or  speak  to  a  human  being,  nor  to  hear  the 
human  voice.  The  experiment  was  abandoned  be 
cause  many  of  the  prisoners  went  mad  under  torture 
by  comparison  with  which  the  rack  and  thumbscrew 
were  mild  correctives.  From  the  abandonment  came, 
at  a  later  day,  the  system  of  working  the  prisoners 
in  company  but  in  silence,  and  separating  them  at 
night.  In  1818  the  legislature  of  Pennsylvania  de 
creed  that  the  conventional  sentence  of  imprison 
ment  at  hard  labor  should  be  changed  to  solitary 
confinement  —  "such  an  entire  seclusion,"  said  the 
law,  "of  convicts  from  society  and  from  one  another, 
as  that  during  the  period  of  their  confinement,  no  one 
shall  hear,  or  see,  or  be  heard  by,  any  human  being 
except  the  jailor,  the  inspector,  or  such  other  persons 
as,  for  highly  urgent  reasons,  may  be  permitted  to 
enter  the  walls  of  the  prison."  It  was  some  time, 
however,  before  the  state  had  the  means  of  trying 
this  method.  A  serious  detriment  to  all  the  experi 
ments  that  were  being  made  was  the  use  that  poli 
ticians  made  of  the  offices  in  the  penitentiaries.  The 
scientific  humanitarians  complained  bitterly  that  the 
prisons  were  in  charge  of  untrained  and  incompetent 
keepers,  the  friends  of  politicians,  and  that  they  were 
changed  as  often  as  the  political  complexion  of  the 
appointing  power  changed.  This  was  the  rule  to 
which  there  were  a  few  honorable  exceptions.  There 
was  complaint,  also,  of  the  use  of  the  pardoning 
power  by  the  governors  of  the  states.  Tender- 

192 


THE  WICKED 

hearted  citizens  signed  petitions  for  pardon  in  un 
worthy  cases;  the  governors  erred  upon  the  side  of 
mercy;  the  criminals  hoped  for  pardon  instead  of 
striving  to  reform;  the  many  who  were  disappointed 
were  embittered  by  the  spectacle  of  unjust  discrim 
ination. 

Of  the  reformers  the  one  whose  writings  showed 
the  deepest  research  and  the  most  philosophical  con 
sideration  of  the  subject  was  Edward  Livingston,  and 
his  work  on  the  Criminal  Code  for  Louisiana  placed 
him  among  the  first  social  scientists  of  the  world, 
being  received  with  as  great  appreciation  in  Europe 
as  it  was  in  the  United  States.  It  is  impossible  to 
read  his  chapter  on  the  "Code  of  Reform  and  Prison 
Discipline"  without  recognizing  the  statesman-like 
manner  in  which  he  applies  his  erudition,  humani- 
tarianism,  and  philosophy.  He  had  great  hopes  in 
the  revival  and  proper  application  of  the  Pennsyl 
vania  system,  but  he  would  add  to  it  preliminary 
houses  of  detention,  where  the  suspected  and  the 
unconvicted  should  be  confined,  and  houses  of  refuge 
and  industry,  where  prisoners  who  had  shown  signs 
of  regeneration  might  find  employment  and  subsist 
ence  after  leaving  prison  and  before  acceptance  by 
society. 

Even  if  the  solution  of  the  problem  of  reforming 
criminals  was  still  in  the  dark  in  1815  public  opinion 
had  left  behind  the  barbaric  idea  of  retaliatory  pun 
ishments  for  crime,  and  humanity  had  scored  a 
triumph. 

13 


XX 

THE   POOR  AND  SICK 

THE  same  reformers  who  gave  their  attention  to 
the  proper  mode  of  dealing  with  criminals  also 
took  concern  for  poverty  and  the  best  methods  of 
dealing  with  it.  Originally,  the  only  institutions 
which  cared  for  the  poor  were  the  churches.  They 
had  their  poor-boxes  in  America  as  they  had  them  in 
older  countries,  and  the  clergy  distributed  the  alms. 
They  did  not  abandon  the  practice,  but  as  popula 
tion  increased  and  became  more  diverse  in  its  ele 
ments  the  churches  could  not  reach  all  the  poor  and 
had  not  resources  sufficient  for  their  relief. 

Everybody  in  the  United  States  believed  with 
Mathew  Carey  that  this  was  "a  country  far  more 
prosperous  than  any  other  portion  of  the  habitable 
world."  Nevertheless,  it  had  its  derelicts,  unfortu 
nates  and  physically  incapacitated,  who  were  not 
able  to  make  a  living  for  themselves  and  must  be 
supported  by  others.  Most  of  them — in  fact,  nearly 
all  who  were  not  immigrants — were  supported  by 
the  charity  of  individuals.  I  have  said  in  a  previous 
chapter  that  the  members  of  the  community  were 
closer  to  one  another  than  they  have  become  in  the 
specialized  life  of  the  present  day,  and  knew  one  an 
other  better.  So  the  misfortunes  and  distresses  of 

194 


THE  POOR  AND  SICK 

some  were  known  to  the  others  and  were  relieved  by 
direct  ministration.  This  form  of  charity  was  consid 
ered  to  be  a  virtue,  and  it  was  encouraged.  No  ques 
tion  arose  about  its  pauperizing  effect.  In  fact,  it  had 
an  advantage  in  this  respect  over  institutional  charity, 
for  the  person  who  helped  his  unfortunate  neighbor 
had  personal  knowledge  whether  or  not  the  case  was 
a  worthy  one.  In  consequence  of  the  personal  as 
pects  of  beneficence  those  who  received  it  gave  loy 
alty  and  gratitude  in  return.  These  qualities  also 
were  held  to  be  virtues.  It  would  have  been  hard, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  find  an  individual  who  held  direct 
charity  to  be  an  economic  error,  or,  on  the  other,  one 
who  believed  that  a  part  of  the  possessions  of  the  suc 
cessful  or  fortunate  belonged  of  right  to  him. 

This  was  the  age  of  the  predominance  of  the  family. 
It  was  still  the  microcosm  of  the  state,  and  accepted 
responsibilities  toward  poor  and  disabled  members. 
The  well-to-do  families  had  many  dependent  members, 
women  chiefly,  but  old  and  worthless  men  also.  The 
law  could  be  invoked  to  compel  families  to  care  for 
their  own.  In  Pennsylvania,  for  example,  one  who 
could  not  support  himself  must  be  supported  by  his 
father  or  grandfather,  or  by  his  mother  or  grand 
mother,  or  by  his  children  or  grandchildren.  Edward 
Livingston  proposed  that  the  obligation  be  extended 
to  the  collateral  ancestors  and  descendants  also. 

For  the  helpless,  friendless  poor,  without  ties  or 
kindred,  the  communities,  cities,  towns,  or  counties 
generally  made  legal  provision.  If  there  were  only  a 
few  of  them  they  were  boarded  with  private  families; 
if  they  were  numerous  enough  almshouses  were  built 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

for  them.  The  Friends  of  Pennsylvania  had  estab 
lished  an  almhouse  as  early  as  1713.  There  was  a 
city  almshouse  in  Philadelphia  in  1730.  By  1815  all 
the  cities  had  them.  They  served  to  accommodate 
a  great  variety  of  unfortunates — orphans,  foundlings, 
the  sick  and  insane,  besides  ordinary  paupers.  In 
the  almshouse  at  New  York  in  1809  there  were  five 
hundred  and  thirty-eight  adults,  two  hundred  and 
twenty-six  children,  and  one  hundred  and  sixty-six 
sick  in  the  hospital.  In  the  Boston  almshouse  in  1823, 
out  of  some  three  hundred  inmates  seventy  -  eight 
were  sick,  seventy-seven  were  children,  and  nine  were 
maniacs.  Lying-in  rooms  were  included  in  most  of 
the  almshouses.  Attached  to  them  were  houses  of 
employment  where  paupers  who  were  able  to  work 
were  required  to  render  some  return  for  their  sup 
port.  In  the  seaports  and  fast-growing  cities  the 
poverty  was  greatest,  especially  among  foreigners 
who  worked  at  digging  or  on  the  streets.  When  the 
winter  came  their  work  stopped  and  they  must  be 
fed  and  housed  lest  they  die.  Of  the  inmates  in  the 
New  York  almshouse  not  one  in  five  was  an  American. 
One  of  the  earliest  efforts  to  remedy  the  evils  of 
indiscriminate  association  in  the  poorhouses  came  in 
the  founding  of  orphan  asylums.  The  Orphan  Asylum 
Society  of  the  City  of  New  York  was  organized  in 
1806,  being  the  first  in  the  United  States.  It  devel 
oped  from  the  Society  for  the  Relief  of  Poor  Widows 
with  Small  Children,  a  woman's  association  founded 
in  1797,  the  members  of  which  went  about  the  city 
rendering  succor  to  poor  women  and  children.  It 
was  the  first  woman's  charitable  organization  in  New 

196 


THE  POOR  AND  SICK 

York.  They  found  many  orphans,  and  were  impressed 
with  the  injustice  of  associating  them  with  grown 
paupers,  so  they  induced  other  philanthropists  to 
join  in  providing  a  separate  asylum  for  them.  In 
1807  they  were  supporting  twenty  orphans,  and  there 
after  the  number  increased  rapidly.  In  1811  the  legis 
lature  granted  the  asylum  five  hundred  dollars,  and 
this  was  the  beginning  of  state  recognition  of  its  duty 
to  assist  in  the  work  of  educating  orphan  children 
to  be  good  citizens.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church 
opened  an  orphanage  in  New  York  in  1817.  In  1815 
one  was  started  in  Washington,  with  Mrs.  Madison 
at  the  head  of  the  board  of  managers  and  a  number 
of  ladies  associated  with  her.  Orphan  asylums  soon 
multiplied  and  became  a  regular  part  of  the  policy 
of  dealing  with  the  unfortunate  classes.  They  were 
always  started  by  private  benevolence,  but  many  of 
them  received  assistance  from  the  public  taxes  after 
ward. 

Associations  for  charitable  purposes  were  not  many 
nor  important.  There  was  one  in  New  York  called 
the  Association  for  the  Relief  of  Respectable,  Aged, 
Indigent  Females,  formed  in  1813,  probably  the  ear 
liest  effort  to  establish  a  home  for  poor  old  ladies. 
There  was  a  Female  Charitable  Society  at  Provi 
dence,  Rhode  Island,  organized  in  1802,  and  the 
Washington  Benevolent  Society  of  Massachusetts,  or 
ganized  on  Washington's  birthday,  1812,  with  the 
chief  citizens  of  Boston  as  members.  These  organi 
zations  had  a  limited  field.  The  day  of  combination 
and  co-operation  had  not  come. 

The  problem  of  dealing  with  the  insane  was  being 

197 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

discussed,  but  had  not  as  yet  been  solved.  The 
Pennsylvania  Hospital,  which  was  the  oldest  in  the 
United  States,  having  been  opened  in  1752,  had  been 
projected  partly  with  a  view  to  giving  treatment  to 
the  insane,  and  half  the  building  was  given  over  to 
them;  but  it  was  not  entirely  a  free  institution,  and 
in  1815  only  admitted  some  twenty-five  lunatics. 

The  treatment  of  the  insane  was  practically  the 
same  throughout  the  country.  If  they  were  violent 
they  were  sent  to  jail;  if  they  were  harmless  they 
went  to  the  almshouse  or  were  boarded  with  private 
families.  When  hospitals  were  erected  they  were  re 
ceived  there,  but  they  had  no  hospitals  of  their  own. 
The  well-to-do  families  sent  insane  members  to  the 
hospitals  or  kept  them  at  home  or  employed  private 
keepers  for  them.  Many  thousands  of  insane  people, 
who  ought  to  have  been  in  asylums  where  their  com 
fort  and  health  could  be  cared  for  by  trained  at 
tendants,  roamed  at  large,  often  to  their  own  injury 
and  always  to  the  injury  of  normal  persons,  who  be 
came  familiarized  with  the  sight  of  their  affliction 
and  indifferent  to  it.  Some  brutal  individuals  made 
sport  of  it,  and  it  was  a  common  sight  to  see  a  crazy 
wretch  followed  by  a  tormenting  crowd  of  boys  and 
men.  The  provision  for  the  insane  in  Pennsylvania 
was  not  so  good  as  it  was  in  New  York,  but  was  equal 
with  that  of  other  states.  The  Friends  opened  an 
asylum  at  Frankford  in  1817  which  accommodated 
fifty  patients.  The  Pennsylvania  hospital  held  in  all 
about  two  hundred.  There  was  no  provision  by  the 
state  government  till  1848.  There  was  no  asylum 
in  Washington  till  1841.  There  was  none  in  Massa- 

198 


THE   POOR  AND  SICK 

chusetts  till  1839.  It  was  not  until  1839  that  the  in 
sane  were  moved  from  Bellevue  in  New  York  to  a 
hospital  of  their  own,  this  being  the  beginning  of  the 
Bloomingdale  Asylum.  In  1826,  of  one  hundred  and 
eighty-four  patients  in  the  hospital  eighty-two  were 
insane.  The  treatment  they  received  was  barbaric. 
Heroic  methods  prevailed  in  the  treatment  of  most 
diseases,  and  the  violence  of  insanity  was  dealt  with 
by  violent  methods.  It  is  not  necessary  to  open  this 
record  of  horror.  It  was  the  benevolent  Dr.  Benjamin 
Rush  who  invented  a  ' ' tranquilizing  chair,"  in  which 
a  frenzied  insane  patient  could  be  strapped  so  cleverly 
that  he  could  not  even  move  his  head,  this  torture 
being  administered  with  the  idea  that  it  quieted  him. 

There  was  not  a  school  for  the  deaf  and  dumb  in 
the  country,  and  there  were  only  twenty-five  in  the 
world.  In  1817  Thomas  Hopkins  Gallaudet  opened 
his  school  for  deaf  mutes  in  Hartford,  and  in  the  same 
year  one  was  started  in  New  York,  but  there  were 
no  others  for  many  years.  There  was  no  institution 
for  the  blind  until  a  generation  later,  that  at  New 
York,  established  in  1831,  being  the  first  one.  But 
in  1820  several  young  physicians  opened  the  New 
York  Eye  Infirmary  in  two  rooms  at  No.  45  Chatham 
Street  and  rescued  hundreds  of  people  from  blind 
ness.  Until  then  affections  of  the  eye  were  commonly 
supposed  to  be  incurable. 

From  the  almshouse  and  treatment  of  sick  paupers 
developed  the  public  hospital.  When  the  new  alms- 
house  was  opened  in  New  York  at  Bellevue  in  1816 
it  included  two  hospital  pavilions,  whence  came  Belle 
vue  Hospital.  The  patients  were  numerous  enough, 

199 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

but  they  did  not  receive  much  care,  for  in  1817  there 
were  more  than  two  hundred  of  them  attended  by 
one  visiting  physician,  who  came  twice  a  week,  and 
one  house  physician,  who  also  compounded  all  the 
medicines  administered.  The  Pennsylvania  Hospital 
existed  apart  from  the  almshouse,  but  most  of  the 
patients  paid  for  treatment.  The  Philadelphia  Hos 
pital  was  a  part  of  the  almshouse  and  was  opened 
about  1812. 

People  who  could  avoid  it  never  went  to  the  hospitals. 
They  looked  upon  them  with  dread  which  was  not 
ill-founded,  for  most  of  them  were  overcrowded  and 
unsanitary,  and  those  who  entered  were  more  apt  to 
die  than  to  recover.  They  were  intended  as  chari 
table  institutions  limited  to  the  sick  poor  who  were 
without  homes.  The  earliest  hospitals  in  Pennsyl 
vania  had  been  for  sick  strangers  exclusively. 


XXI 

DOCTORS 

GEORGE  WASHINGTON  died  on  December  14, 
1799,  when  he  was  sixty-seven  years  old.  Until 
his  fatal  illness  he  was  in  full  manly  vigor.  The  new 
century  came  in  with  solemn  thoughts  of  the  great 
services  he  had  rendered  his  country.  In  truth,  no 
man  had  ever  done  more  for  a  country  than  he  had 
done  for  America;  but  his  work  had  been  finished 
for  nearly  three  years  before  his  death,  and  there  was 
no  promise  of  further  public  usefulness  for  him. 
Events  had  taken  a  new  turn  and  were  leading  into 
paths  which  were  strange  and  uncongenial  to  him. 
His  last  remarks  before  he  took  to  his  bed  with  the 
ailment  from  which  he  died  were  in  criticism  of  James 
Madison,  spoken  "with  some  degree  of  asperity,"  as 
Tobias  Lear  relates,  and  Madison  was  soon  to  be 
President  and  his  party  in  the  ascendant.  History 
has  no  regrets  to  record  at  the  removal  from  the  stage 
of  an  actor  who  has  played  his  part.  Nevertheless, 
it  is  highly  probable  that  General  Washington  would 
have  lived  for  some  years  longer  if  his  doctor  had 
treated  in  the  proper  manner  the  disease  of  which 
he  died.  He  was  attacked  by  inflammation  of  the 
upper  part  of  the  wind-pipe,  or  what  the  doctors 
now  call  acute  edematous  laryngitis,  a  very  danger- 

201 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

ous  malady  under  any  circumstances,  but  Dr.  Craik, 
his  physician,  did  not  examine  his  larynx,  for  there 
was  no  instrument  then  invented  to  enable  him  to  do 
so.  He  was  given  an  emetic,  purged,  bled,  and  blis 
tered,  and  the  seat  of  his  disability  was  not  directly 
treated  at  all.  No  patient  suffering  as  he  suffered 
would  now  receive  the  treatment  he  received.  Yet 
Dr.  Craik  was  a  skilful  physician,  and  his  two  con 
sultants  were  also  good  doctors,  and  their  diagnosis 
of  the  case  was  doubtless  correct.  No  other  doctor 
would  have  done  any  better  than  they  did. 

The  causes  of  few  diseases  were  known,  and  the 
treatment  of  all  was  wrong.  The  great  specific  of 
the  day  was  mercury,  which  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush 
called  the  "Samson  of  the  materia  medica,"  but 
opium  was  freely  administered,  and  Peruvian  bark. 
The  most  efficacious  part  of  the  treatment,  however, 
as  nearly  everybody  thought,  was  blood-letting. 
There  was  a  small  number  of  doctors  who  protested 
against  it,  but  they  were  overwhelmed  by  the  great 
majority  of  doctors  and  laymen  who  were  loud  in 
its  praises.  They  thought  that  it  lessened  the  morbid 
and  excessive  action  in  the  blood-vessels  and  removed 
fever,  that  it  lessened  pain,  induced  sleep,  prevented 
hemorrhages,  and  was  a  safeguard  against  relapses. 
The  doctors  prescribed  it  for  all  sorts  of  fevers,  for 
pulmonary  consumption,  diabetes,  asthma,  idiocy, 
hysteria,  madness,  catarrh,  gout — for  everything,  in 
short,  except  a  few  hopelessly  debilitating  ailments 
where  it  would  certainly  kill.  The  bleeding  was  not 
generally  performed  by  a  physician,  but  by  a  barber 
who  was  a  specialist  in  this  branch  of  surgery.  He 

202 


DOCTORS 

cut  open  a  vein  in  the  arm,  the  neck,  or  the  foot.  Oc 
casionally  an  artery  would  be  lanced;  but  that  was 
a  very  dangerous  way  of  taking  blood  and  was  re 
sorted  to  rarely.  Leeches  and  the  cup  were  used  some 
times,  and  toward  the  end  of  the  practice  were  the 
usual  way  of  drawing  blood.  Bleeding  was  freely 
practised  in  treating  disease  until  about  1850.  Even 
now,  in  some  of  the  older  towns,  an  old  barber  may 
be  found  whose  sign  proclaims  him  to  be  also  a  "cup 
per  and  leecher." 

Before  a  patient  was  bled  he  was  given  an  emetic 
and  a  purge  and  mercury  to  produce  excitement  and 
inflammation  of  the  glands  of  the  mouth  and  throat 
and  abstract  excitement  and  inflammation  from  the 
more  vital  parts.  This  was  especially  desirable  if 
there  was  morbid  congestion  and  excitement  of  the 
brain.  Besides  this,  the  patient  was  usually  blistered. 
After  complete  depletion  had  been  accomplished  there 
would  be  nothing  for  the  disease  to  work  on,  and  the 
patient  should  recover.  If  any  one  looks  with  horror 
upon  the  course  of  treatment  he  can  reflect  that  the 
profession  in  1815  looked  with  horror  upon  the  course 
which  had  been  followed  by  the  doctors  of  the  gener 
ation  before  them.  And,  whatever  may  be  said  of 
the  medical  profession  in  America,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  it  represented  the  most  advanced  knowledge  of 
the  day.  Benjamin  Rush  died  in  1813,  when  he  was 
the  most  influential  physician  in  the  country.  His 
contemporary  and  successor  as  the  head  of  the  pro 
fession  was  Philip  Syng  Physick,  also  of  Philadelphia. 
Both  were  graduates  of  the  medical  school  at  the 
University  of  Edinburgh;  so  were  David  Hosack, 

203 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

who  led  the  profession  in  New  York ;  Ephraim  Mc 
Dowell,  of  Kentucky;  John  Collins  Warren,  of  Bos 
ton,  and  many  others.  The  Scotch  school  was  in  the 
ascendant,  and  the  Scotch  school  was  thought  to  be 
the  best  in  the  world.  Medicine  was  practised  here  by 
the  pupils  of  Dr.  William  Cullen,  a  great  light  in  the 
history  of  medical  science.  He  was  the  first  physi 
cian  to  generalize  the  phenomena  of  disease;  but  he 
was  devoted  to  theory,  and  said  it  did  not  matter 
whether  practice  or  theory  came  first ;  so  his  followers 
were  disposed  to  subordinate  practice  to  theory.  Dr. 
Rush  in  the  lectures  he  delivered  to  the  medical  stu 
dents  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  quoted  from 
Cullen  a  great  deal  and  said  that  in  medicine  there 
were  ten  false  facts  to  one  false  theory;  but  Rush 
introduced  into  the  science  the  teachings  of  John 
Brown,  also  a  student  at  Edinburgh,  who  had  com 
bated  Cullen's  generalizations.  The  layman  need  not 
enter  into  a  consideration  of  either  school,  as  both 
are  dead.  A  greater  than  Cullen,  John  Hunter,  of 
London,  of  whom  it  has  been  said  that  he  "laid  the 
foundation  of  all  those  improvements  in  surgery, 
physiology,  and  comparative  anatomy  which  have 
been  made  since  his  time,"  was  the  preceptor  of  Dr. 
Physick  and  of  several  other  American  doctors.  In 
fact,  Physick  practised  with  him  for  a  time  and  de 
clined  his  offer  of  partnership  in  order  to  return  to 
Philadelphia. 

The  American  physician  was  essentially  a  prac 
titioner,  however.  He  had  so  much  to  do  that  he 
could  not  undertake  research.  He  was  ruled  largely 
by  authority,  and  he  contributed  little  to  medical 

204 


DOCTORS 

science,  although  his  practical  habits  enabled  him  to 
add  something  to  the  advance  of  surgery.  In  1790 
Rush  offered  some  new  principles  in  medicine,  sug 
gested  by  his  observation  of  the  peculiar  phenomena 
of  diseases  in  the  United  States,  and  from  this  grew 
what  he  and  his  followers  called  "an  American  sys 
tem  of  medicine."  They  traced  all  diseases  to  morbid 
excitement  produced  by  irritants  acting  upon  debility. 
All  prescriptions  were  applied  to  forming  and  fluctu 
ation  states  of  disease. 

The  country  was  in  the  main  a  healthful  place  of 
abode.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  fever,  which  it  was 
believed  came  from  the  exhalations  of  marshes,  from 
decayed  vegetable  matter,  from  old  rotting  timber, 
stagnant  water,  bad  sewerage,  and  lack  of  drainage. 
The  fevers  were  classed  as  remit t ant,  malignant  or 
yellow  fever,  and  chronic  or  nervous  fever.  They 
also  called  the  last-named  typhus,  and  did  not  sep 
arate  typhoid  fever  from  it  till  1829.  The  doctors 
treated  all  fevers  on  the  theory  that  they  could  be 
broken  up.  It  was  not  till  1822  that  Dr.  Jacob  Bige- 
low,  of  New  York,  suggested  that  many  diseases  were 
self-limited  and  that  their  duration  could  not  be 
limited  by  art.  The  changes  in  climate  and  exposure 
produced  a  great  deal  of  catarrh,  and  all  catarrhs 
were  lumped  together.  There  was  much  rheuma 
tism.  It  was  considered  to  be  an  external  disease 
due  to  cold  and  damp.  There  was  a  form  of  malig 
nant  sore  throat  which  became  epidemic  occasionally 
and  killed  many  children.  It  was  really  diphtheria, 
but  was  treated  as  croup.  Much  suffering  and  disease 
was  occasioned  by  decayed  teeth,  and  the  only  dentists 

205 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

were  a  few  in  the  large  cities.  The  free  consumption 
of  ardent  spirits  with  salt  meat  and  bad  cooking 
produced  a  great  deal  of  dyspepsia.  There  was  al 
ways  an  increase  in  sickness  among  the  men  of  a  com 
munity  after  a  public  dinner  had  been  held.  Dr. 
Rush  thought  that  diseases  of  the  mind  were  increas 
ing,  and  attributed  them  in  part  to  the  intemperate 
political  feeling  and  the  excitement  of  the  pursuit 
of  wealth  by  speculation.  No  nerve  diseases  were 
classified  as  such.  Pulmonary  consumption  carried 
off  its  thousands  every  year.  It  was  regarded  as  in 
curable  and  was  treated  with  the  usual  heroic  reme 
dies  ;  but  the  fact  that  life  in  the  open  checked  it  was 
understood.  It  was  remarked  that  Indians  did  not 
have  it.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  gout.  It  was  held 
to  be  quite  distinct  from  rheumatism,  because,  as 
Dr.  Hosack  explained,  it  came  from  internal  causes, 
and  rheumatism  never  did.  By  laymen  generally  it 
was  considered  to  be  proof  that  he  who  had  it  lived 
well  and  that  his  ancestors  had  lived  well,  that  he 
had  an  excusable  fondness  for  good  wines  and  rich 
cooking  and  was  of  virile,  manly  habit.  It  was  sup 
posed  to  separate  him  definitely  from  the  laboring 
part  of  mankind.  The  doctors  said  it  followed  glut 
tony,  drunkenness,  and  debauchery  more  than  any 
other  causes,  but  the  other  causes  were  so  amiable — 
as,  for  example,  long  exercise  of  the  understanding 
in  study — that  a  man  who  was  sick  with  the  gout 
never  concealed  it.  If  he  was  sick  with  some  other 
ailment  it  might  require  inquiry  to  discover  what  it 
was,  but  if  he  had  the  gout  the  disease  was  proclaimed- 
There  was  no  dispute  about  the  remedies — bleeding, 

206 


DOCTORS 

purging,  an  emetic,  salivation,  blistering.  The  faculty 
sought  for  a  quick  remedy,  for,  as  Dr.  Rush  said, 
"Who  has  not  read  of  the  most  interesting  affairs  of 
nations  being  neglected  or  protracted  by  the  princi 
pal  agents  in  them  being  suddenly  confined  to  their 
beds  or  chairs  for  weeks  or  months  by  a  fit  of  the 
gout?" 

What  made  the  death-rate  high  at  various  times 
in  certain  parts  of  the  country  were  the  epidemics  of 
disease.  Several  which  had  scourged  Europe  had  not 
yet  visited  our  shores.  The  bubonic  plague  and  chol 
era  were  not  yet  known.  An  epidemic  of  influenza 
swept  over  the  country  from  South  to  North  in  1789, 
and  again  in  1807,  from  Northeast  to  the  South  and 
the  West,  and  there  were  a  great  many  deaths  from 
it — how  many  was  not  recorded.  In  New  England 
between  1806  and  1817  what  was  known  as  "spotted 
fever"  prevailed  in  many  parts.  It  was  treated  as 
typhus,  but  was  probably  typhoid.  Smallpox  ex 
isted  more  or  less  all  the  time.  It  was  accepted  as  a 
matter  of  course;  but,  the  population  being  scattered, 
it  had  no  such  material  to  work  upon  as  the  dense 
populations  of  Europe  afforded,  and  the  mortality 
from  it  was  not  nearly  so  great.  Inoculation  of  the 
smallpox  virus  was  practised  to  a  small  extent  long 
before  Jenner's  discovery.  The  first  virus  of  cowpox 
was  sent  by  Jenner  to  Dr.  Benjamin  Waterhouse,  of 
Boston,  in  1800,  and  by  1802  vaccination  was  common 
in  that  city.  Dr.  Hosack  at  the  same  time  introduced 
it  in  New  York,  and  the  doctors  of  Philadelphia 
adopted  it.  Dr.  Waterhouse  sent  the  virus  to  Thomas 
Jefferson,  and  he  had  some  three  hundred  people  in 

207 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Washington  vaccinated.  Many  reputable  physicians, 
however,  refused  to  believe  that  giving  a  person  cow- 
pox  would  render  him  immune  from  smallpox.  Fur 
ther,  a  prejudice  arose  against  inoculation,  which 
still  lingers,  from  the  fact  that  occasionally  it  com 
municated  other  diseases.  It  made  its  way,  however, 
and  by  1815  the  terrors  of  smallpox  had  diminished 
to  a  great  extent. 

Far  worse  than  the  smallpox  or  than  any  other 
disease,  more  dreaded,  more  fatal  to  the  communities 
which  it  visited,  more  discussed  and  studied,  was  the 
yellow  fever.  It  was  essentially  a  city  disease;  there 
was  little  or  none  of  it  in  the  country;  and,  while  it 
made  its  way  occasionally  to  towns  in  the  interior,  it 
belonged  chiefly  to  the  seaports  or  river  ports  near 
the  sea.  It  appeared  as  far  north  as  Portland,  Maine, 
and  at  Portsmouth,  Boston,  Providence,  New  Haven, 
and  New  London;  but  it  was  more  terrifying  than 
dangerous  at  those  places,the  deaths  from  it  being  rela 
tively  few.  Every  year  or  two  Baltimore,  Norfolk,  Wil 
mington  (North  Carolina),  Charleston,  and  Savannah 
had  it.  New  Orleans  had  it  worst.  There  was  some 
of  it  every  summer,  and  some  summers  hundreds  of 
deaths  from  it — 800  in  1817  and  2,190  in  1819.  The 
two  cities  which  it  visited  with  most  fatal  effect  were 
the  two  largest,  Philadelphia  and  New  York.  In 
Philadelphia  in  1793  it  killed  more  than  4,000  people 
in  a  population  of  55,000;  in  1798,  when  two- thirds 
of  the  population  had  fled,  it  killed  3,500.  In  subse 
quent  years  there  was  a  small  number  of  deaths,  and 
it  gradually  disappeared.  In  New  York  in  1795 
732  people  out  of  a  population  of  40,000  died  of  it; 

208 


DOCTORS 

in  1798,  2,086;  in  1803,  606;  and  in  1805,  262.  It 
has  been  practically  unknown  in  that  port  since  1822. 
The  description  of  the  epidemic  of  1793  in  Philadel 
phia  will  apply  with  modifications  to  the  epidemics 
in  other  cities — even  to  the  last  one  in  New  Orleans  in 
1878.  Most  of  those  who  could  do  so  fled  into  the 
country,  but  after  the  disease  had  begun  its  ravages 
they  found  few  communities  that  would  receive  them, 
and  many  had  to  stay  at  home  in  consequence.  They 
were  afraid  to  walk  the  streets,  and  shut  themselves 
up  in  their  houses,  with  the  shutters  closed.  Smoking 
was  supposed  to  prevent  infection,  and  women  and 
children  could  be  seen  puffing  cigars.  Others  chewed 
garlic  or  put  it  in  their  shoes  to  keep  off  the  fever, 
being  recommended  to  do  so  by  the  doctors.  Gun 
powder,  tobacco,  niter,  were  burned  in  all  the  houses,  and 
they  were  sprinkled  with  vinegar.  Those  who  ventured 
abroad  held  handkerchiefs  impregnated  with  vinegar 
or  camphor  to  their  noses,  or  carried  pieces  of  tarred 
rope  in  their  pockets,  or  had  smelling-bottles  rilled 
with  what  was  known  as  "thieves'  vinegar,"  a  con 
coction  which  it  was  said  had  been  used  at  Marseilles 
during  the  plague  by  certain  thieves  who  successfully 
robbed  the  dead.  Many  people  bled  themselves,  be 
ing  afraid  of  infection  from  the  barbers  because  they 
had  bled  infected  persons.  Three  of  the  four  news 
papers  of  the  city  stopped  publication,  and  the  public 
offices  were  closed.  The  dead  were  buried  without 
ceremony  or  attendants  at  the  funerals.  A  person  with 
signs  of  mourning  on  his  person  was  avoided.  The 
well  deserted  the  sick;  the  living  deserted  the  dead;  the 
hearses  in  the  streets  were  the  only  sounds  of  travel. 
14  209 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Dr.  Rush  and  Dr.  Physick,  who  began  his  American 
career  in  time  to  fight  the  epidemic  of  1793  and  to 
have  the  disease  himself,  became  the  leading  authori 
ties  on  yellow  fever,  and  were  convinced  that  they 
knew  its  origin  and  how  to  treat  it.  They  bled  copi 
ously  and  gave  enormous  doses  of  calomel,  rhubarb, 
and  jalap,  with  a  low  diet  and  cooling  drinks  and  ap 
plications  of  cold  water  to  the  body.  They  saved  a 
great  many  of  their  patients;  but  Dr.  Edward  H. 
Clark  says  of  Rush,  that  his  "pathology  was  erroneous 
and  his  therapeutics  atrocious."  Rush's  printed  ob 
servations  of  the  disease  were  important  in  future  in 
vestigations,  however.  In  1800  "Peter  Porcupine" 
(William  Cobbett)  published  a  newspaper  called  The 
Rush  Light,  which  ran  for  seven  numbers  and  was 
devoted  to  abuse  of  Rush's  methods  and  personal 
villification  of  him,  and  in  consequence  Rush  sued 
him  for  libel,  and  he  was  fined  five  thousand  dollars. 
But  Dr.  William  Currie,  a  more  responsible  antagonist, 
was  bold  enough  to  protest  against  the  accepted 
methods  of  treatment,  declaring  that  they  weakened 
the  patient  too  much.  He  also  insisted  that  the 
disease  was  not  communicable  from  infected  bedding 
and  similar  sources  and  that  it  invariably  came  as 
an  importation  from  the  South.  He  had  a  following, 
but  the  great  preponderance  of  intelligent  public 
opinion  was  with  Rush's  school.  Of  the  origin  of 
fever  they  thought  as  Dr.  Pinkard  said:  "To  look 
for  it  in  ships  and  vessels,  or  to  strain  the  eye  across 
the  ocean,  in  order  to  fix  its  birthplace  on  the  opposite 
coast  of  the  Atlantic,  or  to  trace  its  descent  from  the 
slaves  of  the  Indian  seas,  was  to  overlook  the  reality 

210 


DOCTORS 

in  search  of  a  phantom.  It  needs  no  foreign  parent; 
the  prolific  earth  is  its  mother;  its  father  the  bright 
god  who  governs  the  day.'* 

Nevertheless,  there  were  quarantine  regulations  in 
all  the  ports,  but  they  did  not  keep  yellow  fever  out, 
as  the  trade  was  large  with  the  West  Indies,  and  es 
pecially  with  Havana,  where  the  fever  always  existed. 
The  gradual  disappearance  of  the  disease  was  due 
to  stricter  quarantine  enforcement;  but  the  people 
of  a  hundred  years  ago  knew  about  as  much  of  its 
cause  as  we  did  until  the  army  surgeons  made  the 
wonderful  discovery  of  the  communicating  mosquito 
a  few  years  ago. 

The  doctors  in  America  did  their  best  to  extend 
their  influence  and  knowledge.  There  were  medical 
journals  of  good  repute  in  Philadelphia,  New  York 
City,  Rochester,  Baltimore,  and  Boston.  There  were 
state  medical  societies  in  all  the  states,  which  fixed 
the  standard  of  medical  education.  As  we  saw  in  a 
previous  chapter,  there  were  medical  schools  at  Yale, 
Harvard,  Dartmouth,  Columbia,  Brown,  the  Uni 
versity  of  Pennsylvania)  and  the  University  of  Mary 
land.  One  was  opened  at  Transylvania  University, 
at  Lexington,  Kentucky,  in  1818;  at  Bowdoin  College, 
at  Brunswick,  Maine,  in  1821 ;  at  the  College  of  Physi 
cians  and  Surgeons,  in  Fairfield,  New  York,  in  1816; 
at  Cincinnati  in  1821 ;  at  Castleton,  Vermont,  in  1820. 
Between  1810  and  1819,  1,375  physicians  were  gradu 
ated.  In  1815  the  medical  apprentices  at  the  alms- 
house  and  the  students  in  the  hospital  and  the  uni 
versity  in  Philadelphia  were  given  permission  to 
attend  the  surgical  operations  in  the  Pennsylva- 

211 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

nia  Hospital,  and  this  was  the  beginning  of  the 
clinic. 

A  doctor  was  a  surgeon  and  even  a  dentist  as  well 
as  a  physician,  but  in  the  country  the  blacksmith 
sometimes  relieved  his  neighbors  of  toothache  by 
rough  extraction.  A  few  dentists  were  practising, 
however,  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  the  first 
ones  having  come  from  France.  The  art  of  making 
artificial  teeth  was  understood ;  and  John  Greenwood, 
one  of  the  earliest  dentists  in  New  York,  made  a  fine 
set  out  of  ivory  for  General  Washington  in  1790  and 
again  in  1795.  It  was  not  until  1839  that  a  dental 
school  was  established,  the  Baltimore  dental  college 
being  the  first. 

There  was  a  strict  limitation  to  the  powers  of  sur 
gery,  not  only  because  of  the  ignorance  of  the  causes 
of  disease,  but  also  because  there  was  no  anesthesia, 
that  discovery  not  being  made  till  1846.  A  patient 
who  was  operated  upon  lay  conscious  and  writhed 
in  pain  as  the  knife  cut  into  him.  His  cries  rent  the 
air,  and  he  had  to  be  held  forcibly  upon  the  operating- 
table  by  strong  attendants.  Under  these  conditions 
operations  must  be  performed  very  rapidly  and  could 
not  be  very  complicated.  The  record  of  American 
achievement  in  surgery  is  creditable  and  showed 
originality  and  daring.  In  1809  Dr.  Ephraim  Mc 
Dowell,  of  Danville,  Kentucky,  performed  an  opera 
tion  upon  a  woman  which  has  since  become  common 
and  has  saved  many  lives;  but  at  the  time  the  pro 
fession  refused  to  accept  it,  and  he  derived  no  credit 
from  his  discovery.  Dr.  Richard  S.  Kissam,  of  New 
York,  performed  the  operation  of  lithotomy,  or  cut- 

212 


DOCTORS 

ting  for  stone  in  the  bladder,  with  great  success.  In 
1818  Valentine  Mott,  of  New  York,  tied  the  innomi 
nate  artery,  a  feat  never  before  accomplished.  Wright 
Post,  also  of  New  York,  performed  a  successful  oper 
ation  for  aneurism  of  the  femoral  artery  in  1813. 
In  that  year  John  Ingalls,  of  Boston,  made  an  ampu 
tation  at  the* shoulder- joint.  Dr.  Walter  Brashear  had 
made  one  at  the  hip-joint  at  Bardstown,  Kentucky, 
in  1806.  The  most  celebrated  of  all  the  surgeons, 
the  father  of  American  surgery,  was  Dr.  Physick. 
Until  his  death  in  1837  no  sick  or  injured  man  thought 
he  had  had  the  full  benefit  of  medical  science  or 
surgical  art  unless  he  had  been  a  patient  of  Dr. 
Physick's. 

Dr.  Hosack  and  his  colleague  in  New  York,  Dr. 
Samuel  Bard,  were  the  pioneers  in  the  science  of 
midwifery.  In  1807  Bard  published  the  first  American 
book  on  the  subject,  and  the  same  year  Hosack  was 
made  professor  of  midwifery  and  surgery  in  the 
College  of  Physicians  and  Surgeons.  That  branch 
of  the  profession  still  hung  upon  the  borders  of  re 
spectability.  Until  Dr.  William  Shippen  had  lectured 
upon  it  at  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  in  1780 
no  student  learned  it.  It  was  not  a  compulsory 
course  for  the  doctor's  degree  at  that  school  till  1843. 
It  was  still  largely  in  the  hands  of  old  women,  and  a 
considerable  proportion  of  women  died  in  childbirth. 

The  profession  was  harassed  by  radicals,  revolu 
tionists,  charlatans,  and  quacks,  but  it  fought  them 
off  and  was  in  complete  possession  of  the  field.  It 
had  never  heard  of  Hahnemann,  although  he  was 
laying  down  his  peculiar  dogmas  at  this  time  and 

213 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

proclaiming  the  efficacy  of  very  small  doses  of  medi 
cine.  The  regular  school  believed  in  furious  doses 
and  thought  there  was  curative  quality  in  the  nau 
seous  taste  of  its  medicines.  The  first  appearance 
of  Hahnemannism  in  the  United  States  was  when 
Dr.  Gram  began  practising  in  New  York  in  1825. 
Strangely  enough,  there  was  some  discussion  among 
the  doctors  of  Mesmer's  theories  of  curing  disease  by 
animal  magnetism.  He  was  known  partly  because 
Dr.  Franklin  had  served  on  the  committee  which 
investigated  his  claims  in  Paris  and  Lafayette  had 
once  been  his  pupil.  Of  course,  his  methods  were 
regarded  as  nonsensical,  but  there  was  a  general  un 
derstanding  that  a  doctor  to  be  successful  should 
make  his  patients  believe  in  the  curative  powers 
of  his  treatment.  Many  people  followed  the  charla 
tans.  In  a  former  chapter  we  saw  that  thousands 
resorted  to  a  faith-curer  in  Vermont.  They  adver 
tised  as  the  same  class  does  now.  In  a  Savannah 
or  a  New  York  paper  you  read  the  same  proclamation 
of  the  wonderful  cures  effected  by  Dr. 's  snake- 
root,  which  cost  only  twenty-five  cents  a  bottle. 


XXII 

COOKS 

DO  the  people  make  the  country,  or  does  the  coun 
try  make  the  people?  We  are  fond  of  speaking 
of  man  as  the  conqueror  of  nature,  but  does  not 
nature  govern  him  quite  effectively?  If  the  climate 
of  a  country  is  such  as  conduces  to  health  and  energy 
in  the  man,  and  the  soil  yields  abundantly  for  his  food, 
he  will  thrive.  His  surroundings  will  adapt  him  to 
them.  Some  of  the  emigrants  to  America  have  come 
from  crowded  countries  where  each  family  has  farmed 
an  area  of  a  few  acres,  and  at  first  they  have  been 
appalled  at  the  prospect  of  farming  a  hundred  acres  or 
more;  but,  unless  they  have  passed  the  learning  age, 
they  have  accommodated  themselves  to  the  larger 
area.  It  is  impossible  that  their  natures  should  not 
expand  with  their  industry  and  that  they  should  not 
become  hundred-acre  men  in  their  ideas,  so  to  speak. 
After  all  our  boasting,  then,  it  would  seem  that  the 
American  continent,  being  a  magnificent  domain,  gave 
a  magnificent  destiny  to  the  people  whom  it  nourished. 
The  greatest  credit  that  they  can  properly  claim  is 
that  they  left  behind  them  the  outworn  customs  with 
which  centuries  of  usage  had  burdened  them  in  Eu 
rope,  and  that  they  preserved  the  liberty  with  which 
the  New  World  clothed  them  when  it  received  them. 

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LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

"The  destiny  of  nations  depends  upon  the  manner 
in  which  they  nourish  themselves,"  and  the  Americans 
of  one  hundred  years  ago  had  a  right  to  look  forward 
to  the  future  with  confidence,  for  there  were  no  people 
in  the  world  so  abundantly  supplied  with  food  as 
they  were. 

When  Captain  John  Smith  came  to  Virginia  he 
found  the  Indians  cultivating  corn,  and  from  this 
beginning  it  became  the  most  universally  used  food 
of  the  white  settlers.  The  Indians  pounded  it  in  a 
stone  mortar  and  made  it  into  meal.  Adding  a  little 
water,  they  formed  it  into  a  cone  which  they  cooked  in 
the  hot  embers  of  a  fire.  The  white  man  put  a  similar 
cake  upon  a  hoe  and  put  the  hoe  on  the  fire,  whence 
came  the  hoe-cake  and  corn  bread.  Indian  corn  was 
believed  to  be  the  most  wholesome  single  article  of 
food  in  the  world,  and  the  one  most  capable  of  feeding 
the  whole  man.  There  were  few  people  in  the  United 
States  one  hundred  years  ago  who  did  not  eat  it 
every  day  of  their  lives. 

In  due  season  all  the  domestic  food  animals  of 
Europe  were  imported  and  thrived  in  every  part  of 
the  country;  and  beef,  mutton,  pork,  and  the  barn 
yard  fowls  became  plentiful.  Besides  these,  there  was 
a  great  variety  of  game — turkeys,  geese,  ducks,  pheas 
ants,  pigeons,  and  smaller  birds,  all  so  plentiful  in 
their  appointed  seasons  and  places  that  the  people 
were  free  to  feed  upon  them.  Venison,  too,  was  avail 
able  in  all  parts  of  the  country  and  was  eaten  almost 
as  much  as  beef.  What  is  now  food  which  only  the 
rich  man  can  enjoy  was  then  accessible  to  all  classes 
of  the  population.  The  waters  abounded  in  fish — 

216 


COOKS 

cod,  carp,  mackerel,  salmon,  shad,  bass,  and  a  hun 
dred  other  kinds.  Shell-fish  were  found  along  the 
coast  and  in  the  adjacent  rivers  and  bays.  Only  the 
interior  regions  were  without  oysters.  Terrapin  were 
plentiful  in  the  rivers  and  bays  from  Pennsylvania  to 
Florida,  and  sea- turtles  on  the  Southern  coast.  All 
the  common  garden  vegetables  were  grown — Irish  and 
sweet  potatoes,  peas,  beans,  cabbage,  cauliflower,  car 
rots,  parsnips,  celery,  artichokes,  and  a  number  of 
others.  The  tomato  was  almost  the  only  garden 
food  they  missed.  They  called  it  the  love-apple,  and, 
as  it  was  a  variety  of  the  nightshade,  they  thought 
it  to  be  poisonous  and  only  used  it  to  make  sauces. 
By  1830,  however,  it  was  eaten  generally.  Small 
fruits  were  plentiful — cherries,  pears,  peaches,  and 
apricots.  The  finer  varieties  of  apples  were  cultivated 
in  some  orchards,  but  apples  were  eaten  raw  to  a 
very  limited  extent.  They  were  mixed  with  meat  or 
boiled  with  cider  to  make  apple-sauce,  but  they  were 
raised  chiefly  for  cider,  and  for  this  the  small,  knotty 
apples  were  supposed  to  be  the  best.  Such  berries  as 
strawberries  were  so  plentiful  in  the  wild  state  that 
they  were  cultivated  very  little.  The  forests  yielded 
a  multitude  of  nuts,  and  the  peanut  was  known,  but 
had  not  yet  become  a  product  of  systematic  cultiva 
tion. 

This  was  not  the  land  of  the  gourmand.  Fine 
cooking  was  a  detail  of  life,  and  the  Americans 
were  indifferent  to  details.  As  in  speaking  they  were 
careless  of  their  grammar  and  only  sought  to  make 
their  meaning  clear,  so  in  eating  they  did  not  demand 
elegance  in  the  cooking  if  the  food  itself  was  good. 

217 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

They  were  preoccupied  with  things  which  seemed  to 
them  more  important  than  eating,  and  were  unwilling 
to  spend  much  time  or  thought  upon  the  table.  They 
ate  quickly  and  only  to  live.  The  comfortable  fat 
man  with  smooth  flesh  upon  his  bones,  with  round 
face  and  stomach — the  product  of  leisurely  apprecia 
tion  of  the  pleasures  of  the  table — was  a  rare  product. 
The  typical  American  was  a  lean  man. 

The  cooking  of  the  poor  American  was  generally 
bad.  His  wife  fried  nearly  everything,  because  it  was 
the  easiest  and  quickest  way  of  cooking  it.  She  made 
bread  and  pastry  which  were  indigestible  enough  to 
ruin  the  character  of  the  people.  There  was  a  limit 
to  the  harm  she  could  inflict  upon  corn  meal  and  salt 
pork,  however,  and  these  were  the  chief  articles  of 
diet.  Undoubtedly,  the  bad  cooking  was  one  of  the 
causes  that  produced  the  cadaverous,  shambling  men 
and  sour-faced,  flat-breasted  women  who  were  met 
with  at  every  turn  of  the  road  in  the  South  and  often 
enough  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  It  was  one  of 
the  causes,  too,  of  the  habit  of  drinking  rum  or 
whisky.  The  liquor  was  used  to  satisfy  an  appetite 
which  had  been  irritated  by  ill-cooked  food. 

The  professional  cooks  of  the  country  were  negroes, 
and  the  national  cookery  came  from  them.  They  were 
taught  the  art  by  their  white  mistresses,  but  they 
had  a  natural  aptitude  for  it  and  made  it  their  own. 
They  liked  the  heat  of  the  kitchen,  and  preferred  the 
desultory  labor  of  cooking  to  any  other  form  of  work. 
They  were  proud  of  the  praise  they  received  from 
their  masters  and  mistresses  when  they  performed 
it  well.  It  gave  them  a  position  of  importance  in  the 

218 


COOKS 

house  and  flattered  their  self-esteem.  Their  own 
pleasures  were  sensual,  and  they  were  very  fond  of 
eating,  so  they  cooked  with  appreciation.  While 
their  cooking  varied  in  the  different  sections  of  the 
country,  in  its  general  characteristics  it  was  the  same, 
and  it  was  marked  with  the  tropical  origin  of  the 
cooks.  The  trained  palate  could  tell  if  the  food  was 
cooked  by  a  negro  in  New  York  as  well  as  in  Savannah. 
Probably  the  best  cooking  was  in  New  Orleans, 
where  the  negroes  had  been  taught  by  the  French 
or  Creole  settlers;  but  traces  of  Creole  cooking  pene 
trated  to  the  North.  The  race  of  good  negro  cooks 
lasted  until  the  rise  of  the  second  generation  of  negroes 
after  the  Civil  War.  It  has  now  almost  disappeared, 
because  the  free-born  negroes  take  no  pride  in  domestic 
service  and  refuse  to  learn  the  art  which  their  mothers 
in  bondage  practised  with  so  much  success. 

But  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  people  who 
were  rich  enough  to  own  or  hire  negro  cooks  were 
the  only  ones  who  lived  well.  On  the  farms  in  the 
well-settled  portions  of  the  country  the  prosperous 
and  thrifty  housewives  were  too  intelligent  to  live 
uncomfortably,  and  epicures  who  had  catholic  tastes 
testified  that  their  gastronomical  experiences  were 
agreeable  when  they  enjoyed  the  hospitality  of  Amer 
ican  farm-houses.  The  most  interesting  tribute  came 
from  the  greatest  authority,  Anthelme  Brillat  Savarin, 
a  French  statesman  who  fled  from  France  at  the  time 
of  the  revolution  and  spent  several  years  of  his  exile 
in  the  United  States.  He  gave  lessons  in  French  at 
Hartford  and  played  the  violin  in  the  orchestra  of 
the  Park  Theater  in  New  York.  He  returned  to  France 

219 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

in  1796  and  became  a  judge  of  the  court  of  cassation. 
He  died  in  1826,  and  his  classic  work,  the  Physiologic 
du  Gout,  was  published  after  his  death.  It  contains 
many  pleasing  allusions  to  the  good  eating  he  enjoyed 
when  he  lived  in  the  United  States.  He  described  the 
abundant  dinner  he  had  at  a  farm-house  in  Connecti 
cut — the  superb  piece  of  corned  beef,  the  stewed 
goose,  the  magnificent  leg  of  mutton,  vegetables  in 
plenty,  and  at  each  end  of  the  table  an  enormous 
jug  of  excellent  cider;  and  after  dinner  the  daughters 
of  the  house  prepared  excellent  tea. 

In  a  primeval  forest  near  Hartford  Brillat  Savarin 
shot  a  large  wild  turkey,  and  the  feast  which  followed 
the  next  day  he  set  down  as  a  noteworthy  event  in  a 
life  of  gastronomical  adventures.  He  declared  that  the 
turkey  was  "one  of  the  most  beautiful  presents  that 
the  New  World  had  made  to  the  Old,"  and  he  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  while  it  had  been  domesti 
cated  in  all  the  countries  of  Europe,  in  America  alone 
was  it  found  in  a  state  of  nature.  It  was,  he  said, 
the  favorite  food  of  all  classes,  and  they  were  united 
by  this  preference.  When  the  farmers  wished  to 
make  a  feast  they  chose  for  the  principal  dish  a  tur 
key;  so  did  the  artisans  and  the  workmen;  so  did 
the  politicians  and  financiers.  Dr.  Johnson,  writing 
his  dictionary  in  1755,  defined  a  turkey  as  "a  large 
domestick  fowl  supposed  to  come  from  Turkey/' 
but  the  American  origin  of  the  fowl  was  generally 
known  at  a  later  day.  It  was  plentiful  enough  in 
1815  to  be  accessible  to  all  but  the  poorest  people. 

Equally  accessible  to  everybody  and  equally  prized 
by  all  classes  of  the  population  were  the  oysters, 

220 


COOKS 

which  existed  in  the  greatest  profusion  in  the  bays 
and  rivers  along  the  whole  coast,  but  were  thought 
to  reach  their  perfection  in  Chesapeake  Bay.  Oyster- 
houses  were  common  in  the  cities,  where  they  were 
eaten  raw  on  the  shell.  At  Le  Count's  United  States 
Refectory,  at  the  corner  of  Fifth  and  Chestnut 
Streets,  in  Philadelphia,  was  a  famous  oyster-bar, 
presided  over  for  many  years  by  John  Gardener, 
who  opened  so  many  oysters  that  he  became  an  au 
thority  on  their  habits  and  printed  the  result  of 
his  observations  in  an  amusing  and  instructive 
pamphlet. 

But  the  people  were  fond  of  other  and  less  whole 
some  food  than  turkeys  and  oysters.  There  is  an 
account  of  Mrs.  Madison  at  breakfast  at  Monticello 
buttering  her  muffin  carelessly  and  being  told  how 
she  ought  to  do  it  by  one  of  the  young  children 
at  the  table.  Thus  from  childhood  to  old  age  the 
Southerners  were  eaters  of  hot  bread;  but  the  evil 
existed  in  all  parts  of  the  country.  Buckwheat-cakes 
and  flapjacks  were  eaten  immoderately  in  the  East, 
and  hot  rolls,  muffins,  and  biscuits  were  on  every 
breakfast-table  in  the  South.  There  was  a  cheerful 
interchange  of  products  between  the  sections,  and 
buckwheat-cakes  were  in  the  South  and  hot  rolls 
in  the  North.  Foreigners  generally  commented  un 
favorably  upon  the  habit  of  eating  hot  bread,  and 
declared  it  was  the  cause  of  much  of  the  ill  health  of 
the  people.  American  physicians  also  advised  against 
it;  but  admonition  was  in  vain,  and  it  has  contin 
ued  without  appreciable  diminution  to  the  present 
day. 

221 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

The  custom  of  eating  salted  meat,  especially  pork, 
was  not  confined  to  America,  but  was  more  prevalent 
here  than  it  was  elsewhere.  Nearly  everybody  in  the 
country  districts  and  many  in  the  city  regarded  salt 
pork  as  the  staff  of  life.  The  hogs  were  killed  late 
in  the  autumn  and  their  meat  eaten  every  day  in 
the  year.  Even  to  this  day  in  certain  sections  of  the 
country  the  word  "meat"  is  commonly  understood 
to  mean  pork.  Probably  the  constant  use  of  salted 
meat  was  another  reason  for  the  thirst  of  the  people. 
Pork  in  the  shape  of  hams  was  eaten  by  everybody, 
and  a  well-furnished  dinner-table  was  considered  to 
be  incomplete  without  it. 

The  custom  of  serving  dinner  in  courses  was  not 
practised  as  we  now  practise  it.  Ordinarily,  the  whole 
dinner  was  on  the  table  at  the  same  time,  but  for  a 
special  feast  there  might  be  two  courses  of  the  same 
character  and  each  a  dinner  in  itself.  The  attractive 
ness  of  the  table  depended  upon  the  symmetrical 
arrangement  of  the  dishes  and  upon  their  garnish 
ment.  There  would  be  nine  or  ten  large  dishes  upon 
the  table,  besides  a  number  of  smaller  ones.  The  table 
cloth  would  hardly  be  visible.  An  opulent  man  giv 
ing  a  dinner-party  would  serve  something  like  the 
following:  for  the  first  course,  "cod's  head,"  being  the 
head  and  shoulders  of  a  fresh  codfish,  a  dish  much 
esteemed  at  the  time;  pea -soup,  venison,  chickens 
roasted,  boiled  ham,  beef  collops,  which  corresponded 
with  beefsteak;  potatoes,  celery,  parsnips,  jelly,  pies, 
and  marrow  pudding.  For  the  second  course,  turkey 
poults  (young  turkeys),  scolloped  oysters,  roasted 
rabbits,  wild  ducks,  lamb,  smelts,  haricot  (usually 

222 


COOKS 

written  "harrico,"  being  a  mutton  ragout),  several 
vegetables,  cherry  tarts,  and  stewed  pippins.  Then 
there  would  be  brought  in  some  ice-cream  by  itself. 
It  was  considered  to  be  a  great  luxury,  and  it  was 
eaten  on  rare  occasions.  The  decanters  of  wine  were 
distributed  about  the  table.  The  servants  placed  the 
dishes  on  the  table  and  changed  the  plates  and 
knives  and  forks  from  time  to  time.  The  largest  dishes 
of  meat  were  carved  by  the  host  and  hostess,  and  the 
person  nearest  a  dish  was  expected  to  help  his  neigh 
bors  to  it.  Thus  they  all  fed  one  another,  and  every 
body  was  busy.  The  wine-drinking  began  early  in 
the  feast,  and  the  people  drank  one  another's  health 
individually  and  collectively.  After  the  second  course 
the  cloth  was  removed,  the  wine  was  replaced,  fresh 
glasses  were  put  on,  and  probably  a  fresh  vintage, 
with  nuts  and  fruit.  The  hostess  then  withdrew  with 
the  other  ladies,  if  there  were  any;  but  the  dinner 
party  was  a  pleasure  generally  reserved  for  men. 
Around  the  bare  mahogany  they  drank  lightly  or 
heavily,  as  the  case  might  be.  At  these  dinners  dis 
cussions  of  importance  often  took  place  as  the  ma 
deira  or  claret  circulated,  agreements  for  political  ac 
tion  were  reached,  the  fate  of  ambitious  aspirants  for 
public  office  was  determined,  financial  projects  were 
arranged.  How  many  acts  done  in  the  cold  light  of 
day  were  the  result  of  suggestion  or  encouragement 
coming  from  men  who  were  warmed  with  wine  and 
good  feeding  sitting  at  the  dinner-table  is  beyond 
power  of  calculation.  One  illustration  can  be  given, 
but  similar  instances  could  be  multiplied.  It  was  at  a 
dinner-party  given  by  Thomas  Jefferson  to  Alexander 

223 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Hamilton  in  1789  that  an  agreement  was  made  by 
which  the  Capital  of  the  United  States  was  located 
upon  the  banks  of  the  Potomac  and  the  general  gov 
ernment  assumed  the  debts  of  the  states.  It  may  be 
that  those  communities  where  dinner-giving  was  com 
mon  exerted  greater  influence  upon  national  affairs 
than  communities  where  the  men  seldom  ate  and 
drank  together  enjoyed. 

After  the  wine-drinking  at  a  dinner-party  the  sur 
viving  guests  went  to  the  drawing-room  and  drank 
tea  with  their  hostess.  Coffee  did  not  figure  on  these 
occasions,  and  it  was  not  as  generally  drunk  as  it  was 
at  a  later  period.  In  fact,  the  consumption  in  the 
next  thirty  years  increased  by  more  than  twelvefold. 
The  tea-drinking  or  the  uninterrupted  wine-drinking 
might  run  into  supper,  in  which  case  the  party  would 
not  break  up  till  eleven  o'clock  at  night.  The  dinner 
having  begun  at  three  o'clock,  which  was  a  late  hour 
even  in  the  cities,  there  would  have  been  about  eight 
hours  of  continuous  eating  and  drinking.  At  some 
tables  an  innovation  in  the  courses  was  being  adopted 
by  serving  the  fish  and  soup  as  a  first  course  by 
themselves,  but  nobody  had  yet  thought  of  a  dinner 
of  eight  or  ten  courses.  Silver  forks  were  used  at  the 
dinner-party,  but  for  every-day  purposes  steel  three- 
pronged  forks  were  universal.  As  they  did  not  hold 
some  kinds  of  food  very  well,  it  was  not  considered 
inelegant  to  convey  food  from  the  plate  to  the  mouth 
with  the  knife. 

Naturally,  it  was  only  a  small  proportion  of  the 
people  who  went  to  private  dinner-parties,  but  the 
public  had  opportunities  of  accomplishing  something 

224 


COOKS 

of  the  same  result  by  attending  the  public  dinners 
which  were  given  in  the  towns  and  villages  and  at 
tended  by  people  from  the  surrounding  country. 
The  reason,  or  the  excuse,  for  holding  them  was  to 
celebrate  notable  anniversaries  or  events  or  to  do 
honor  to  public  men.  A  great  many  were  given  on 
the  4th  of  July  and  the  226.  of  February,  and  there 
were  a  number  in  honor  of  the  Treaty  of  Ghent. 
Often  they  were  political  gatherings  designed  to  in 
fluence  public  opinion.  A  local  committee  managed  the 
feast  and  sold  the  tickets  to  any  one  who  cared  to  pay 
for  them.  They  cost  about  a  dollar  each,  or  perhaps 
more,  some  dinners  being  more  expensive  than  others. 
The  shopkeepers,  proprietors,  people  of  all  classes 
except  the  laborers,  attended  them.  It  was  easy 
enough  to  load  the  long  tables  with  substantial  food 
and  with  liquor,  punch,  and  wine.  If  a  band  of  music 
was  obtainable  it  played  before  and  during  the  dinner. 
Usually  it  could  not  play  afterward.  The  local  militia 
escorted  the  lion  of  the  occasion  in  procession  through 
the  streets  to  the  dinner.  If  there  was  a  cannon  avail 
able  it  thundered  salutes  to  persons  and  sentiments. 
The  committee  drew  up  a  long  list  of  toasts,  to  which 
were  added  by  various  guests  what  were  called  "vol 
unteers."  Most  of  the  toasts  were  printed  in  the 
newspaper  after  the  dinner,  and  they  were  supposed 
to  show  the  trend  of  public  sentiment.  They  aimed 
to  be  epigrammatical  expressions  of  that  sentiment. 
A  few  will  serve  to  illustrate  their  general  character. 
At  the  dinner  given  early  in  1815  to  Commodore 
McDonough  at  Trap,  New  Castle  County,  Delaware, 
near  the  place  of  his  birth,  one  toast  was:  "The 
is  225 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

American  character,  as  much  caressed  since,  as  it  was 
despised  before  our  late  struggle — Honor  to  the  brave 
men,  both  on  the  sea  and  land,  who,  at  imminent 
risk  of  their  lives,  brought  their  country  into  notice 
and  established  its  national  character." 

At  one  given  June  15,  1815,  at  Fairfield,  Vermont, 
to  General  Wooster :  "The  Constitution  of  the  United 
States — the  basis  of  our  independence,  the  cement 
of  our  Union — may  it  be  kept  sacred  and  inviolable 
as  the  tables  of  stone  in  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant." 

At  a  dinner  given  to  General  William  Henry  Har 
rison  at  Petersburg,  Virginia,  in  March,  1817:  "The 
people — brave,  patriotic,  virtuous;  free,  sovereign, 
and  independent.  Four  guns." 

"The  American  navy — the  ocean  and  the  lakes, 
the  grand  theaters  of  its  glory.  Two  guns." 

"The  Spanish  patriots — contending  for  liberty. 
Whilst  we  sigh  for  their  misfortunes  we  glory  in  their 
triumph.  Two  guns." 

There  might  be  twenty  toasts  or  more  at  a  dinner, 
and  a  man  who  drank  them  all  must  have  got  very 
tipsy,  but  many  of  the  diners  did  so  independently 
of  the  toasts.  In  a  former  chapter  we  saw  that  the 
members  of  the  first  temperance  society  excepted 
public  dinners  from  their  agreement  not  to  drink; 
and  in  another  place,  that  the  doctors  said  there  was 
always  an  increase  in  the  amount  of  sickness  in  a 
town  after  a  public  dinner.  They  were  demoralizing 
assemblages.  What  with  the  music,  the  speechmak- 
ing,  the  hurrahing,  the  cannon-firing,  and  the  drink 
ing,  there  was  excitement  enough  to  tear  the  nerves 
of  the  participants  asunder.  The  only  thing  that  can 

226 


COOKS 

be  said  in  their  favor  is  that  they  brought  men  of 
different  classes  together  on  a  plane  of  common 
interest  and  enabled  them  to  know  one  another  at 
their  worst.  The  whisky -bottle  is  a  rough  promoter 
of  democracy. 


XXIII 

DISCONTENT 

WHEREVER  we  travel  through  Christendom 
— in  Europe,  America,  or  elsewhere — we  find 
great  numbers  of  men,  of  all  descriptions,  very  much 
dissatisfied  with  their  condition,  or,  in  other  words, 
with  the  state  of  society  with  which  they  are  con 
nected."  This  true  statement  was  in  the  introduction 
to  a  pamphlet  published  in  London  in  1789,  entitled 
"A  Plan  for  a  Free  Community  upon  the  Coast  of 
Africa  .  .  .  with  an  Invitation,  under  certain  Con 
ditions,  to  all  Persons  desirous  of  partaking  the 
Benefits  thereof."  It  was  signed  by  two  men  from 
Sweden,  one  from  Prussia,  and  one  American;  but 
their  names  are  unimportant,  for  they  are  now  un 
known  to  fame.  That  dissatisfaction  was  prevalent 
in  Europe  was  true,  but  the  dissatisfied  element  in 
America  was  small.  There  was  really  nothing  to 
cause  dissatisfaction.  There  was  no  social  injustice. 
One  class  was  not  exploited  by  another  class — in  fact, 
there  was  no  such  word  as  exploitation.  There  was 
no  privileged  class.  If  a  man  had  the  elements  of 
success  in  him  he  succeeded.  There  were  individuals 
who  complained  because  they  were  unfortunate,  and 
there  were  others  who  looked  for  perfection  in  human 
affairs  and  attributed  its  absence  to  a  false  constitution 

228 


DISCONTENT 

of  society.  These  were  only  individuals;  they  con 
stituted  no  group  of  the  population. 

The  foundation  of  the  national  prosperity  was  the 
land,  and  good  land  was  abundant.  Under  the  law 
the  national  lands  were  sold  for  two  dollars  per  acre. 
One-twentieth  of  the  purchase  price  must  be  depos 
ited  to  pay  costs  of  survey  and  registration,  which 
amounted  to  $11.00;  one-fourth  of  the  total  price 
must  be  paid  in  forty  days;  one-half  in  two  years; 
three-fourths  in  three  years,  and  the  whole  in  four 
years.  The  immediate  capital  necessary  to  obtain 
640  acres  was  not  more  than  $331.  An  able-bodied 
man  of  good  reputation  could  borrow  it.  Later  the 
price  was  reduced  to  $1.25  per  acre,  and  various  laws 
were  passed  by  which  a  settler  could,  under  certain 
conditions,  obtain  land  for  nothing.  Besides  these 
national  lands  were  the  great  tracts  held  by  several  of 
the  states  and  by  individuals,  parcels  of  which  could 
be  bought  on  terms  so  easy  that  they  were  accessible 
to  everybody.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  speculation 
in  land,  but  the  speculators  themselves,  demoralizing 
as  their  influence  was,  were  active  in  obtaining  set 
tlers  for  the  new  land  by  selling  it  to  them.  The 
farming  was  done,  as  it  had  been  done  for  hundreds 
of  years — with  the  plow,  the  horse,  and  by  hand. 
There  were  no  important  inventions  in  agriculture 
till  1831,  when  McCormick  made  his  reaper  and 
Manning  his  mowing-machine.  To  be  a  farmer  on 
an  equality  with  other  farmers  required  little  capital. 

The  rich  men  of  the  country  had  not  yet  become  a 
power  to  excite  general  alarm.  They,  too,  were  only 
individuals.  The  largest  fortunes  were  made  in 

229 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

shipping.  The  adventurer  sent  American  products 
abroad  in  his  own  ships  and  exchanged  them  for 
foreign  products  which  he  brought  home  and  sold 
at  an  enormous  profit.  It  was  a  simple  and  direct 
form  of  commerce,  which  did  not  carry  with  it  the 
idea  that  the  individual  was  enriching  himself  by 
the  labor  of  others.  One  of  these  shippers  was  Israel 
Thorndike,  of  Boston,  who  died  in  1832,  leaving  a 
fortune  of  more  than  two  million  dollars.  He  was 
described  as  the  richest  man  in  New  England.  Will 
iam  Bingham,  who  died  in  1804,  had  been  perhaps 
the  richest  man  in  America.  He  owned  two  million 
acres  of  land  in  Maine,  and  the  largest  house  in  Phila 
delphia,  but  the  basis  of  his  fortune  was  laid  in  the 
West  Indian  trade.  The  shippers  sent  their  vessels 
into  every  sea — to  Turkey,  China,  and  East  India 
as  well  as  Europe  and  the  West  Indies.  Stephen 
Girard,  in  Philadelphia,  had  amassed  a  great  fortune. 
He  died  in  1831,  leaving  nine  million  dollars.  He  was 
a  banker,  but  his  wealth  began  in  shipping.  John 
Jacob  Astor,  in  New  York,  was  an  exception  to  the 
rule  that  the  great  fortunes  came  from  shipping. 
He  became  rich  as  a  fur-trader  and  was  already  buying 
large  tracts  of  land  in  the  city  and  contiguous  to  it. 
His  was  the  only  great  fortune  of  the  day  which 
has  survived  to  the  present  time.  Individual  for 
tunes  were  rising  in  New  York,  but  a  man  who  had 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars  was  among  the  few  who 
were  called  very  rich.  There  were  not  five  millionaires 
in  the  city.  Exclusive  of  the  United  States  bank, 
there  were  eleven  banks  in  New  York  and  ten.  in 
Philadelphia.  Six  of  the  New  York  banks  and  four 

230 


DISCONTENT 

of  those  in  Philadelphia  had  a  capital  of  over  one  mill 
ion  dollars.  There  were  some  rich  bankers,  but 
their  wealth  was  uncertain,  for  this  was  the  period 
of  state  bank-making.  Between  1812  and  1817  there 
were  three  times  as  many  of  them  as  there  had  been 
in  previous  years,  and  an  enormous  increase  in  the 
volume  of  circulating  bank-notes.  All  the  banks  ex 
cept  those  in  New  England  suspended  specie  payments 
in  1814  and  bank-notes  fell  in  value.  The  result  was 
in  1819  the  first  great  financial  panic  in  the  country, 
many  business  failures  and  much  distress.  An  effect 
of  the  speculation  and  the  bank  failures  was  to  create 
a  popular  prejudice  against  banks  in  general,  which 
bore  fruit  some  years  later  when  General  Jackson 
was  President  and  fought  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States. 

Along  the  Hudson  River  and  in  the  central  part 
of  New  York  were  a  few  large  landholders,  whose 
ancestors  had  obtained  their  lands  by  Dutch  grants, 
and  who  had  let  them  out  on  a  sort  of  feudal  tenure. 
After  the  Revolution  they  retained  the  ownership  and 
obtained  some  state  lands  as  well,  and  had  tenant 
farmers.  The  injustice  of  paying  rent  to  proprietors 
who  had  no  part  in  developing  the  land  caused  serious 
discontent  among  the  tenants,  which  finally  culmi 
nated  in  1841  in  an  attempted  revolution  which 
became  known  as  the  anti-rent  war.  The  condition 
was  local  and  is  an  interesting  illustration  of  the  fact 
that  where  injustice  prevailed  discontent  took  form. 
It  was  an  exception  to  the  rule  that  the  land  was  cul 
tivated  by  those  who  owned  it.  The  great  tracts  of 
wild  lands  held  for  speculative  purposes  were  not 

231 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

farmed  at  all,  until  they  were  sold  to  cultivators. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  were  not  needed. 

After  the  land  the  wealth  of  the  country  was  chiefly 
in  two  items,  shipping  and  slaves,  each  being  com 
puted  as  worth  two  hundred  and  twenty-five  million 
dollars. 

The  planters  of  the  South  were  rich  men — that  is 
to  say,  they  had  the  attributes  of  wealth  in  the 
form  of  servants,  horses,  large  houses,  abundance  of 
food,  and  fine  clothes.  They  traveled  occasionally 
and  sent  their  children  to  the  best  schools.  They 
were  capitalized  at  a  large  sum,  because  their  slaves 
were  very  valuable,  being  worth  from  one  hundred  and 
fifty  to  fifteen  hundred  dollars  each.  So  a  man  who 
had  fifty  slaves  and  a  thousand  acres  of  land  would 
be  worth  some  forty  thousand  dollars,  a  respectable 
fortune.  But  he  had  no  stocks  or  bonds  or  money 
out  at  interest.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  apt  to  be 
paying  interest,  for  he  was  often  in  debt.  He  lived 
by  the  labor  of  others.  He  exploited  a  lower  class 
of  men  whom  he  kept  in  bondage.  He  was  privi 
leged.  The  system  of  society  in  which  he  lived  was 
built  upon  palpable  social  injustice.  The  observa 
tions  which  have  been  made  here  about  the  absence 
of  a  basis  for  a  discontented  class  in  the  United  States 
do  not  apply  to  the  South.  There  the  voice  of  dis 
content  was  suppressed,  but  there  the  discontent 
was  deep  and  serious.  We  should  look  to  find  from 
these  conditions  projects  for  reform,  and  we  do  not 
look  in  vain. 

There  were  many  plans  for  freeing  the  slaves. 
To  use  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  public  land  to  buy 

232 


DISCONTENT 

them  from  their  owners;  to  emancipate  all  who 
should  be  born  after  a  certain  date;  to  allow  them 
to  buy  their  own  freedom  by  their  labor — these  and 
many  other  projects  were  put  forward  with  the  best 
intentions.  The  chief  argument  against  them  was 
that  they  made  no  provision  for  removing  the  blacks 
after  they  were  free,  and  the  conviction  was  general 
that  a  large  population  of  free  negroes  could  not 
safely  exist  in  the  same  country  with  a  white  popu 
lation.  From  this  conviction  came  the  plans  for 
sending  the  freedmen  back  to  the  continent  from 
which  they  had  been  stolen.  These  projects  were 
the  noble  fruit  from  an  evil  soil.  Their  object  was 
to  encourage  emancipation  which  should  come  from 
philanthropic  motives,  by  showing  slaveholders  a 
happy  and  prosperous  state  composed  of  black  citi 
zens  in  Africa.  The  free  blacks,  too,  whose  position 
in  the  United  States  was  always  uncertain  and  often 
deplorable,  would  be  free  in  fact,  and  would  have 
opportunity  to  develop  all  that  was  good  in  them — 
an  opportunity  which  they  could  not  have  as  long 
as  they  lived  in  the  United  States.  Finally,  there 
were  the  Africans  themselves,  sunk  in  savagery,  igno 
rance,  and  superstition.  The  American  blacks,  free, 
Christianized,  and  with  some  education,  would  be  as 
missionaries  among  them,  and  would  lead  them  out 
of  their  mental  and  moral  darkness  into  the  light  of 
Christianity  and  knowledge. 

The  first  efforts  at  colonizing  American  negroes 
in  Africa  were  made  in  England,  where  certain  Eng 
lish  philanthropists,  under  the  lead  of  Granville 
Sharp,  planned  to  send  the  negroes  who  had  escaped 

233 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

to  English  jurisdiction  during  the  Revolution  to 
Sierra  Leone.  They  had  been  sent  to  England, 
where  they  were  a  public  charge  and  a  demoralized 
and  useless  part  of  the  population.  A  strip  of  terri 
tory  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa  was  bought  for 
them,  and  arrangements  were  made  to  send  them  there. 
Many  of  them  refused  to  go;  many  ran  away,  and  the 
ships  for  Sierra  Leone  finally  sailed  with  less  than 
seven  hundred  colonists,  only  about  a  third  of  the 
number  for  whom  the  colony  had  been  planned. 
From  various  causes,  the  basis  of  which  was  the 
incapacity  of  the  colonists  and  the  perfidy  of  the 
agents  who  were  in  charge  of  the  enterprise,  the 
scheme  failed.  Some  of  the  colonists  were  killed  by 
the  natives,  many  died  of  disease,  and  only  a  remnant 
was  left  to  drag  out  a  miserable  existence  in  a  miser 
able  land. 

Nevertheless,  certain  American  emancipationists 
thought  the  experiment  might  be  tried  with  better 
prospects  of  success  under  other  conditions;  and  John 
Jay,  who  was  always  an  emancipationist,  and  the  Rev. 
Samuel  Hopkins,  of  Rhode  Island,  who  had  proposed 
colonization  of  free  negroes  in  Africa  as  early  as 
1773,  wrote  to  Sharp  on  the  subject.  He  replied  dis- 
couragingly,  but  William  Thornton,  who  also  wrote 
to  him,  would  not  accept  discouragement.  Thornton 
had  recently  chosen  the  United  States  for  his  home 
and  wished  to  free  the  large  number  of  slaves  he  had 
on  his  plantation  in  the  Island  of  Tortola,  one  of 
the  Virgin  Isles  in  the  West  Indies.  He  was  reared 
a  Quaker,  although  he  left  that  persuasion  when  he 
married  a  Philadelphian  who  was  an  Episcopalian. 

234 


DISCONTENT 

Of  soaring  ambition  and  daring  thought,  young  and 
enthusiastic,  he  burned  with  a  desire  to  do  some  act 
which  would  elevate  humanity  and  make  his  name 
immortal.  He  thought  the  English  colony  had  failed 
for  reasons  which  he  could  remedy.  For  one  thing, 
the  colonists  were  helpless  because  they  had  been 
freed  too  suddenly.  He  would  have  them  obtain  their 
freedom  by  their  own  exertions  and  become  gradually 
accustomed  to  relying  upon  themselves.  Moreover, 
the  freedmen's  new  home  must  be  an  independency. 
They  must  erect  a  new  nation.  He  interested  his 
friend  Brissot  de  Warville  in  Paris  in  the  plan,  and 
Brissot  brought  in  other  Frenchmen.  Thornton  in 
tended  to  go  with  the  colonists  himself,  and,  doubtless, 
had  visions  of  being  the  head  of  the  new  nation  and 
carrying  out  some  of  the  many  plans  for  a  great 
state  which  grew  in  his  fertile  brain.  His  work 
extended  from  1786  to  1791,  during  which  time  he 
traveled  in  Rhode  Island  and  Massachusetts,  and 
also  made  addresses  on  the  subject  of  colonization  in 
Pennsylvania.  About  two  thousand  freed  negroes 
in  New  England  expressed  a  willingness  to  go  to 
Sierra  Leone.  Thornton  hoped  that  the  legislature 
of  Massachusetts  would  send  them,  but  when  he 
approached  some  of  the  members  he  found  they  were 
unwilling  to  transport  the  negroes  so  far.  They  pro 
posed,  instead,  to  send  them  to  the  most  southern 
part  of  the  public  lands  of  the  United  States,  between 
the  white  settlements  and  the  Indian  country.  To 
this  Thornton  would  not  agree.  Thus  situated,  he 
said,  they  would  be  exposed  to  massacre  by  the  In 
dians;  and,  moreover,  if  a  black  territory  were  estab- 

235 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

lished  in  the  United  States  the  inhabitants  would 
never  be  given  political  rights.  So  the  scheme  fell 
through,  and  his  restless  mind  turned  to  another 
subject — the  building  of  a  great  city  upon  the  banks 
of  the  Potomac  for  the  capital  of  the  American 
nation.  He  proposed  at  a  later  day  the  purchase  of 
negro  slaves  by  the  government  and  their  employ 
ment  upon  public  works  pending  their  emancipation, 
and  that  the  island  of  Porto  Rico  should  be  bought 
from  Spain  and  made  a  home  for  them.  The  public 
mind  was  ready  for  none  of  these  things,  and  the 
idea  of  negro  colonization  slumbered  for  twenty-five 
years,  when  it  was  awakened  under  greater  promise 
of  success  than  it  had  ever  had  before. 

On  December  21,  1816,  the  American*  Colonization 
Society  was  formed  at  a  meeting  in  Washington  over 
which  Henry  Clay  presided.  The  first  president  was 
Bushrod  Washington,  a  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
the  nephew  of  General  Washington,  and  the  owner 
of  Mt.  Vernon.  Most  of  the  members  were  slave 
holders  who  lived  in  the  hope  of  finding  a  practicable 
way  of  accomplishing  emancipation.  Money  was 
raised  by  popular  subscription  and  bequests.  The 
government  gave  its  patronage  to  the  plan  and 
appropriated  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  send 
the  freedmen  to  the  country  which  the  society 
selected  for  them.  The  scheme  at  first  took  on  the 
appearance  of  a  popular  movement.  The  eagerness 
with  which  enlightened  Southerners  embraced  it 
shows  how  earnestly  they  wished  to  rid  themselves 
of  the  incubus  of  slavery.  Opposition  to  the  society 
developed  in  a  few  parts  of  the  South,  however, 

236 


DISCONTENT 

where  it  was  looked  upon  as  hurtful  to  the  pecuniary 
interests  of  the  planters  and  slave-dealers.  It  de 
pended  for  its  income  too  much  upon  voluntary 
donations.  Church  collections  and  the  proceeds  of 
ladies*  fairs  were  a  part  of  its  resources,  and  a  very 
uncertain  part.  It  required  a  large  and  assured  in 
come  to  carry  out  the  tremendous  purpose  it  was 
designed  to  accomplish,  and  it  did  not  have  it.  From 
the  beginning  the  society  fell  too  much  into  the  hands 
of  clergymen.  They  had  the  missionary  project  of 
converting  the  Africans  too  much  in  their  minds. 
Practical  men  cared  nothing  for  the  souls  of  the 
Africans;  they  were  concerned  with  the  hideous  evil 
which  existed  at  home,  and  they  doubted  the  effi 
ciency  of  a  society  which  clergymen  were  managing. 
The  freed  blacks  themselves  showed  no  eagerness  to 
go  to  Africa,  and  they  could  not  be  compelled  to  go. 
After  all,  the  society  was  a  very  small  organization 
to  grapple  with  a  very  large  problem.  If  everything 
went  well  with  it  the  results  would  still  be  hardly 
noticeable  in  a  population  of  more  than  a  million 
blacks.  It  staggers  the  imagination  to  suppose  that 
the  leaders  of  the  society  should  have  expected  to  es 
tablish  a  prosperous  community  in  such  a  place  as  that 
which  they  chose  for  settlement.  One  of  the  agents 
whom  they  sent  to  report  on  it  died  of  the  fever. 
The  climate  was  hopelessly  enervating  to  those  whom 
it  did  not  kill  outright.  Nevertheless,  a  few  thousand 
misguided  American  negroes  went  from  time  to  time 
to  the  new  land,  and  finally  established  the  republic 
of  Liberia,  an  independent  nation,  under  the  protec 
tion  of  the  United  States,  probably  the  least  important 

237 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

country  in  the  world,  the  feeble  child  of  a  devoted 
and  wholly  futile  effort  to  free  the  country  from  the 
worst  evil  that  has  ever  afflicted  it.  Hardly  any 
slaves  were  emancipated  in  order  that  they  might 
emigrate.  Nevertheless,  the  Colonization  Society  was 
talked  about  long  after  it  ceased  to  deserve  notice. 
It  exists  even  now  and  administers  a  small  income 
which  yet  belongs  to  it,  and  now  and  then  sends  a 
few  American  negroes  to  join  their  unhappy  brothers 
in  Africa. 


XXIV 

EXCRESCENCES 

THE  efforts  for  the  betterment  of  the  American 
blacks  were  a  legitimate  outcome  of  American 
conditions,  but  there  were  certain  communities  in  the 
country  established  for  the  betterment  of  their  own 
members  which  had  no  such  basis.  These  communi 
ties  were  not  indigenous;  all  were  imported. 

The  Shakers  are  the  oldest,  and  there  are  still  about 
one  thousand  of  them  left  in  fifteen  societies  in  New 
York,  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  Maine,  Con 
necticut,  Ohio,  and  Kentucky.  The  membership  is 
diminishing,  and  their  total  disappearance  is  only  a 
matter  of  time.  It  is  remarkable  that  they  have  held 
together  for  so  long.  In  1815  the  sect  had  reached 
its  greatest  prosperity  and  numbered  some  five  thou 
sand  people.  The  founder  was  an  ignorant  English 
working-woman,  Ann  Lee,  who  came  to  New  York 
from  Manchester  in  1774  with  two  women  and  six 
men  who  believed  her  to  be  the  "Mother  in  Christ" 
and  called  her  "Mother  Ann."  She  worked  as  a 
washerwoman  for  two  years,  when  she  and  her  little 
band  formed  a  community  at  Watervliet  near  Albany. 
In  England  she  had  been  persecuted  for  her  religious 
pretensions,  and  in  this  country  she  was  imprisoned 
on  the  charge  of  being  a  British  spy  in  1776,  but  was 

239 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

pardoned  by  Governor  Clinton  the  following  year 
and  thereafter  suffered  no  molestation  from  the  law. 
At  different  times,  however,  there  was  some  popular 
animosity  toward  her  followers,  and  they  were  har 
assed  by  mobs  on  several  occasions.  The  recruits  who 
joined  her  sect  were  the  products  of  the  frequent 
religious  revivals.  At  a  revival  which  took  place  at 
Mt.  Lebanon,  Columbia  Count}',  New  York,  in  17  So, 
a  number  of  Hie  participants  joined  Mother  Ann's  per 
suasion  and  founded  a  community  at  that  place,  which 
became  the  parent  of  the  other  societies.  In  1781  she 
made  a  missionary  journey  through  New  England  and 
several  communities  were  started.  Her  death  in  1 784 
had  no  effect  on  the  progress  of  Shakerism,  and  fol 
lowing  the  great  revival  in  Kentucky  in  1805  villages 
were  established  in  that  state,  Indiana,  and  Ohio. 
One  pledge  which  the  brethren  and  sisters  took  said, 
among  other  things: 

"We  do  by  these  presents  covenant  and  agree  to  re 
nounce  and  disannul  every  band,  tie,  and  relation  of  the 
flesh  and  to  hold  ourselves  free  and  separate  from  all  that 
pertains  to  the  corrupt  generation  of  fallen  men,"  etc. 

The  Shakers  believe  that  Christ  appeared  on  earth 
for  the  second  time  in  the  person  of  Ann  Lee,  and 
that  they  are  enabled  by  their  faith  to  "take  up  a 
full  and  daily  cross  against  the  world,  the  flesh,  and 
all  evil"  and  "to  follow  Christ  in  the  regeneration 
by  which  they  believe  God  according  to  His  everlast 
ing  promise  will  gather  together  in  one  all  things  in 
Christ  which  are  in  heaven  and  upon  earth."  They 
are  loyal  to  their  country  and  declare  that  their 
belief  is  perfectly  consistent  with  civil  rights.  They 

240 


EXCRESCENCES 

believe  in  liberty  of  conscience  and  "that  all  souls 
whom  God  has  created  are  free  and  have  a  right  to 
believe  according  to  their  own  conviction  and  to  act 
according  to  their  own  faith."  They  are  non-com 
batants,  however,  and  regard  military  service  as 
sinful.  They  believe  in  celibacy  for  themselves,  but 
have  no  objection  to  marriage  among  people  who  are 
not  of  their  elect.  They  require  their  members  to 
confess  their  sins  to  an  elder.  They  believe  they 
must  live  separated  from  the  world  and  holding  their 
property  in  common.  They  are  spiritualists,  and 
Mother  Ann  and  other  departed  shades  often  appear 
at  their  meetings.  Mother  Ann  herself  claimed  the 
power  of  divine  healing  of  the  sick,  and,  according  to 
the  testimony,  effected  several  miraculous  cures.  At 
their  meetings  there  is  singing,  dancing,  marching, 
and  whirling,  besides  exhortation  and  prayer.  A 
great  many  of  them  have  reached  a  stage  where 
their  lives  have  become  sinless.  Originally  professing 
the  Quaker  creed,  they  were  known  as  "Shaking 
Quakers,"  but  they  soon  became  a  distinct  sect  and 
accepted  the  designation  of  Shakers.  Their  civil 
and  religious  government  are  in  the  same  persons, 
deacons  and  deaconnesses,  and  elders  and  eldresses, 
who  appoint  their  own  successors.  The  women  and 
the  men  are  upon  a  perfect  equality.  They  are  careful 
to  keep  the  sexes  apart,  however.  Everything  is 
ordered  with  rigid  regularity.  The  meals  are  eaten 
in  silence,  the  men  and  women  at  separate  tables,  and 
no  amusements  are  permitted.  As  everybody  works 
and  the  strictest  economy  prevails,  they  have  attained 
material  prosperity.  The  fact  that  they  are  abso- 

16  241 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

lutely  honest  in  their  dealings  and  thorough  in  their 
work  is  an  additional  reason  for  this.  The  regularity 
of  their  lives  has  produced  some  notable  cases  of 
longevity  among  them.  These  figures  were  given  by 
one  of  them  for  the  communities  of  Hancock,  Massa 
chusetts,  and  Mt.  Lebanon,  but  the  last  figure  seems 
incredible:  Fifty-three  of  the  members  lived  to  be 
more  than  ninety  years  old,  of  whom  thirteen  died 
when  they  were  more  than  ninety-five,  four  when 
they  were  over  one  hundred,  and  one  after  he  had 
lived  for  one  hundred  and  twenty  years.  I  have 
seen  a  great  many  of  their  hymns,  prayers,  and 
narratives  of  experiences.  They  show  the  perfect 
self-confidence  and  strength  of  conviction  of  ignorant 
minds.  They  do  not  show  weakness  of  intellects,  but 
narrowness.  Those  who  came  after  Mother  Ann 
were  better  educated  than  she  was;  in  fact,  she  could 
neither  read  nor  write;  but  there  have  never  been 
any  cultivated  people  among  the  Shakers.  While 
the  Shakers  were  English  in  their  origin,  their  mem 
bership  was  drawn  mainly  from  Americans,  but 
there  was  always  a  fair  proportion  of  foreigners. 

The  Harmony  Society,  which  is  the  next  oldest 
community  in  the  United  States,  was  foreign  in  its 
origin  and  always  remained  so  in  all  essentials.  The 
members  did  not  vote,  although  they  were  naturalized 
as  American  citizens,  and  their  recruits  came  from 
Germany.  They  used  the  German  language.  George 
Rapp,  the  founder  and  guiding  spirit  of  the  com 
munity,  was  of  a  far  higher  grade  of  intelligence  than 
Mother  Ann.  He  was  better  educated,  less  preten 
tious,  and  his  creed  and  conduct  were  less  unreason- 

242 


EXCRESCENCES 

able.  He  claimed  no  divine  origin  or  power,  and  he 
did  not  believe  in  spiritualism.  He  fled  from  Wurt- 
temberg,  where  he  was  born,  because  he  and  his 
followers  were  persecuted  for  practising  their  re 
ligion.  With  three  hundred  families,  constituting 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  men,  women,  and  children, 
he  built  the  town  of  Harmony  in  Butler  County, 
Pennsylvania,  in  1805,  but  the  soil  and  climate  did 
not  suit  them,  and  in  1814  they  moved  to  the  val 
ley  of  the  Wabash  in  Indiana,  where  they  built  a 
second  Harmony.  In  1825  they  moved  again,  to 
Beaver  County,  Pennsylvania,  where  they  built  the 
town  of  Economy,  and  where  the  remnant  of  the 
sect,  now  not  a  dozen  members,  still  resides.  The 
community  was  industrious  and  honest,  its  indus 
tries  were  diversified,  and  it  became  very  rich. 
George  Rapp  died  in  1847,  when  he  was  ninety 
years  old,  and  the  Harmonists  drifted  on  without 
the  master  guiding  hand.  Originally  they  were  not 
celibates;  but  in  1807  they  decided  that  marriage 
distracted  people  from  higher  duties  and  was  not 
consonant  with  their  belief  in  the  original  dual 
nature  of  Adam,  and  there  were  no  more  mar 
riages  among  them.  The  cardinal  point  in  their 
creed  was  that  the  second  coming  of  Christ  was 
near  at  hand,  when  the  millennium  would  come  and 
the  earth  would  be  like  the  Garden  of  Eden  before 
the  fall  of  Adam.  The  great  object  of  life,  therefore, 
was  to  be  ready  for  the  reappearance  of  Christ,  and 
Rapp  expected  to  present  his  followers  as  worthy  of 
divine  favor.  The  communistic  mode  of  life  they 
thought  was  a  command  of  Christ. 

243 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

In  1818  another  band  of  persecuted  Germans  came 
to  America  from  Wurttemberg.  They  settled  in  Tus- 
caroras  County,  Ohio,  where  they  founded  a  village 
which  they  called  Zoar,  after  the  little  city  in  which 
Lot  found  refuge  when  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  were 
destroyed.  At  first  they  were  not  communists,  but, 
finding  it  difficult  to  hold  the  members  of  their  sect 
together  because  of  their  uneven  fortunes,  they 
adopted  communism  as  a  convenience.  They  were 
celibates  till  1828  or  1830,  when  they  permitted 
marriage,  but  they  never  encouraged  it.  Like  the 
followers  of  Rapp,  they  came  to  escape  religious 
persecution,  and  they  proselyted  only  in  Germany. 
They  prospered  fairly  well,  but  they  did  not  have 
as  great  cohesive  force  as  the  Harmonists  or  Shakers, 
because  their  creed  was  much  milder.  They  did  not 
have  as  able  a  leader  as  Rapp.  They  called  them 
selves  Separatists,  and  merely  disapproved  of  the 
forms  and  ceremonies  of  the  established  church  of 
Germany.  True  Christian  life,  they  said,  requires  no 
set  forms  and  ceremonies.  They  were  opposed  to 
military  service.  They  retained  the  rules  which  they 
made  in  Germany,  which  were  applicable  there  and 
had  no  application  here.  They  had  a  simple  govern 
ment,  the  officers  being  elected  by  majority  vote, 
the  women  having  a  vote  equally  with  the  nien. 
Their  religious  meetings  were  held  only  on  Sundays 
and  all  the  people  did  not  attend  them.  They  were 
of  the  German  peasant  class,  and  they  did  not  pro 
gress  beyond  it.  There  were  never  more  than  five 
hundred  members  of  the  community.  It  decreased 
and  passed  out  of  existence  in  1898. 

244 


EXCRESCENCES 

When  George  Rapp  and  his  followers  left  their  land 
and  buildings  in  Indiana  they  sold  them  for  one  hun 
dred  thousand  dollars  to  Robert  Owen,  of  Lanark, 
who  thus  acquired,  ready  made  as  it  were,  the  plant 
for  a  more  important  social  experiment  than  Rapp's; 
but  Owen's  experiment  was  inspired  by  an  entirely 
different  purpose  from  Rapp's  and  belongs  to  a  dif 
ferent  period.  It  marks,  in  fact,  the  beginning  of 
socialism  in  the  United  States.  It  was  the  outcome 
of  the  factory  system.  It  was  an  effort  to  overcome 
the  injustice  of  employing  large  bodies  of  men  to 
create  wealth  and  of  not  permitting  them  to  receive 
a  fair  proportion  of  the  wealth  which  they  created. 
It  was  not  directed  to  their  spiritual  welfare;  on  the 
contrary,  it  tended  to  concentrate  their  attention 
upon  their  material  well  being.  It  has  its  place  in  the 
economic  history  of  the  United  States  under  condi 
tions  which  did  not  exist  at  the  time  of  which  I  am 
writing,  when  there  were  no  large  American  facto 
ries. 

In  1813  Owen  wrote  his  essay  on  "A  New  View  of 
Society,"  and  it  found  its  way  to  America  where  a 
few  idealists  welcomed  it.  In  a  former  chapter  I 
spoke  of  the  New  York  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Pauperism.  It  was  a  practical  charitable  organiza 
tion  which  dealt  with  poverty  under  existing  condi 
tions;  but  another  society  was  formed  about  1820 
entitled  "The  New  York  Society  for  Promoting  Com 
munities,"  the  organizers  being  four  ministers,  one 
attorney,  five  physicians  and  surgeons,  a  printer, 
three  teachers,  a  merchant,  a  builder,  and  one  whose 
occupation  was  not  stated.  It  had  as  its  object  to 

245 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

"convince  the  pious  of  all  denominations  that  their 
duty  is  to  constitute  and  establish  in  every  religious 
congregation  a  system  of  social,  equal,  and  inclusive 
rights,  interests,  liberties,  and  privileges  to  all  real 
and  personal  property"  which  would  cause  "self-love 
to  expire  in  social  love"  and  introduce  the  gospel 
of  peace  on  earth  and  good  will  to  men;  and  "when 
the  inclusive  system  became  general  the  present  gov 
ernment  of  exclusive  rights  and  properties  would  be 
supplanted  by  the  government  of  Jehovah  and  his 
annointed,  the  Prince  of  Peace."  It  said:  "The 
heartrending  statements  which  were  made  known 
during  the  discussions  of  negro  slavery  do  not  exhibit 
more  afflicting  scenes  than  those  which,  in  various 
parts  of  the  world,  daily  arise  from  the  injustice  of 
society  toward  itself."  So  this  society  intended  to 
abolish  poverty,  crime,  and  injustice.  I  cannot  find 
that  it  got  any  adherents  or  founded  any  communi 
ties.  It  printed  extracts  from  Owen's  "New  View  of 
Society,"  all  unconscious  that  Owen  was  an  infidel 
and  would  soon  proclaim  the  fact. 

The  three  communities,  the  Shakers,  the  Harmo- 
nites,  and  the  Separatists,  were  the  only  ones  in  the 
United  States  one  hundred  years  ago,  and  they  were 
mere  excrescences  on  our  national  life,  superficial 
appendages  without  organic  significance.  They  ex 
cited  little  attention  at  the  time  and  made  no  im 
pression  on  the  normal  progress  of  the  nation.  A 
few  people  under  strong  religious  excitement  found 
among  the  Shakers  conditions  which  enabled  them 
to  continue  their  exaltation;  but  in  Harmony  and 
Zoar  there  was  nothing  to  attract  them.  There  were 

246 


EXCRESCENCES 

reasons  why  Mother  Ann  and  Rapp  and  the  Separa 
tists  should  have  come  to  America;  they  were  perse 
cuted  in  Europe;  but  there  was  no  reason  beyond 
their  own  preference  for  their  living  in  separate  com 
munities  in  this  country. 


XXV 

THE   GOVERNMENT 

EXCEPT  for  the  few  groups  of  communists,  who 
lived  by  themselves  all  the  people  in  the  United 
States  in  1815  took  a  personal  interest  in  the  political 
affairs  of  the  country.  They  were  busy  making  a 
living,  but  they  were  not  so  engrossed  by  their  in 
dustry  that  it  excluded  the  government  from  their 
thoughts.  They  were  still  considering  the  nature  of 
that  government.  They  knew  that  it  was  not  a 
democracy,  and  the  utmost  lengths  to  which  those 
who  wished  it  to  be  a  government  of  the  people,  and 
argued  that  it  was,  cared  to  go  was  to  call  it  a  demo 
cratic  republic.  Everybody  believed  in  representa 
tive  government.  The  governors  of  eight  of  the 
eighteen  states  were  elected  by  the  legislatures,  and 
not  by  the  people  directly.  It  was  considered  to  be 
enough  that  the  people  should  directly  elect  their 
Representatives  in  Congress  and  their  local  officers. 
The  legislatures  had  chosen  the  delegates  to  the  Con 
tinental  Congress  and  the  delegates  to  the  conven 
tion  which  framed  the  Constitution.  The  Constitu 
tion  itself  was  not  ratified  by  a  vote  of  the  people,  but 
by  conventions  of  delegates  whom  the  people  had 
selected  to  decide  for  them  whether  or  not  it  should 
be  accepted.  The  people  still  believed  that  the  elec- 

248 


THE  GOVERNMENT 

toral  college  chose  the  President.  No  voice  was 
raised  to  demand  a  direct  election  by  popular  vote  of 
Senators.  No  one  proposed  that  the  people  should 
vote  directly  on  proposed  legislation. 

Nevertheless,  this  was  understood  to  be  a  govern 
ment  of  public  opinion,  and  it  was  generally  agreed 
that  no  important  measure  should  become  law  until 
it  had  been  publicly  discussed  and  a  sentiment  for  it 
had  been  manifested.  It  was  not  generally  believed 
that  a  count  of  heads  was  the  best  way  to  ascertain 
what  the  public  sentiment  was.  Universal  manhood 
suffrage  was  being  experimented  with,  but  was  not 
yet  accepted  as  a  safe  basis  of  government.  In  twelve 
of  the  states  voting  was  conditioned  upon  ownership 
of  real  property  or  payment  of  taxes. 

The  electors  felt  the  responsibility  of  their  power 
and  had  a  good  understanding  of  public  affairs. 
They  read  pamphlets  and  articles,  and  listened  to 
speeches  on  pending  political  questions  which  were 
thorough  and  even  erudite  discussions.  The  nature 
of  the  information  which  those  who  understood  the 
voters  put  before  them  shows  that  their  intelligence 
was  held  in  respect.  This  is  not  to  say,  however, 
that  the  demagogue  was  not  busy  with  them.  If 
a  country  is  governed  by  an  individual  there  will 
be  people  near  him  who  will  try  to  influence  him 
to  their  advantage  by  flattering  him  and  playing 
upon  his  weaknesses.  If  the  people  govern  there 
will  always  be  designing  men  who  will  try  to  use 
them  by  arousing  their  passions  and  making  them 
false  promises.  It  would  seem  that  courtiers  who 
deceive  the  monarch  and  demagogues  who  deceive 

249 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

the  masses  are  the  worst  forms  of  an  evil  which 
afflicts  all  governments.  In  1815  the  United  States 
was  governed  by  the  middle  class,  who  were  not  easily 
worked  upon  by  tricks  and  lies.  There  was  no  power 
ful  moneyed  class,  and  there  were  no  great  groups  of 
ignorant  voters  such  as  now  cluster  in  the  large 
cities.  Unless  the  surviving  evidence — the  books,  the 
published  debates  in  Congress  and  the  state  legis 
latures,  the  pamphlets,  newspaper  articles,  and  private 
letters — is  wholly  misleading,  demagogic  appeals  to 
the  governing  power  were  not  a  conspicuous  feature 
of  political  life  one  hundred  years  ago. 

Public  opinion  was  forming  steadily  in  the  direction 
of  the  belief  that  the  United  States  was  a  nation,  but 
it  had  not  yet  formed  in  that  belief.  It  was  common 
to  speak  of  "the  Nation,"  because  there  was  no  other 
word  to  describe  the  country  as  a  whole,  but  it  was 
not  considered  to  be  a  nation  for  domestic  purposes. 
Against  a  foreign  country  the  states  stood  as  one 
power;  but  at  home  the  country  was  thought  to  be  an 
aggregation  of  political  entities,  each  of  which  had 
most  of  the  attributes  of  sovereignty  and  might  as 
sume  them  all.  They  had  voluntarily  given  certain 
sovereignty  to  the  federal  government,  and  were  free 
to  recall  it.  National  laws  were  drawing  the  bands 
tighter,  and  each  year  the  union  became  more  and 
more  difficult  to  break,  but  the  right  to  break  it 
existed,  as  most  of  them  believed. 

In  1794  Oliver  Ellsworth,  of  Connecticut,  and  Rufus 
King,  of  New  York,  had  an  interesting  private  con 
versation  with  John  Taylor  of  Caroline,  of  Virginia, 
all  three  being  Senators  at  the  time.  King  and  Ells- 

250 


THE  GOVERNMENT 

worth  proposed  that  there  be  an  amicable  dissolution 
of  the  Union,  because  the  sections  could  not  agree  on 
any  government  measure;  but  Taylor  would  not  con 
sent,  and  thought  the  differences  could  be  accom 
modated.  He  reported  the  conversation  to  Madison, 
who  was  then  the  leader  of  the  House,  and  Madison 
was  disposed  to  think  that  King  and  Ellsworth  had 
been  trying  to  frighten  Taylor;  but  this  point  is  not 
important  to  our  inquiry.  They  would  not  have  made 
a  treasonable  and  unpatriotic  suggestion  for  strategi 
cal  purposes.  They  did  not  consider  their  suggestion 
to  be  either  treasonable  or  unpatriotic;  nor  did  Tay 
lor  and  Madison  so  consider  it.  So  far  as  their  atti 
tude  toward  the  Union  was  concerned  there  was  no 
real  difference  between  the  opposing  parties  at  this 
time.  The  party  which  was  in  power  wished  to  con 
tinue  the  union;  the  party  which  was  in  the  opposition 
threatened  it.  In  the  first  Congress  both  parties 
would  have  dissolved  it  under  a  little  pressure. 
Business  came  to  a  standstill,  and  there  seemed  to 
be  no  object  in  Congress  meeting,  because  the  South 
could  not  get  the  North  to  agree  to  locate  the  capital 
in  the  South,  and  the  North  could  not  get  the  South 
to  agree  that  the  general  government  must  assume 
the  war  debts  of  the  several  states.  Having  weathered 
this  storm,  the  Federalists  began  to  think  of  disunion 
a  few  years  later,  as  we  have  just  seen.  The  exciting 
cause  of  their  dissatisfaction  was  that  the  opposition 
Senators  opposed  the  confirmation  of  John  Jay  as 
Minister  to  England,  and  favored  a  sequestration  of 
British  debts,  because  Great  Britain  had  not  paid  for 
the  slaves  she  had  carried  off  during  the  Revolution. 

251 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

There  was  no  vital  issue  at  stake  between  the  parties, 
and  no  serious  injury  to  the  rights  of  either  could  have 
come  from  the  success  of  the  other.  When  the  Feder 
alists  passed  the  Alien  and  Sedition  laws  it  was  the 
turn  of  the  Republicans  to  talk  of  disunion,  and  plans 
were  discussed,  especially  in  Virginia  and  North  Caro 
lina.  In  1811,  when  Louisiana  was  about  to  be  ad 
mitted  as  a  state,  a  Federalist,  Josiah  Quincy,  of  Mass 
achusetts,  threatened  disunion  in  the  course  of  the  de 
bate  in  the  House  of  Representatives.  The  ground  of 
complaint  was  that  the  new  territory  was  so  large  that 
it  would  dwarf  the  old  states.  That  the  nation  would 
gain  prestige  was  of  no  consequence  alongside  of  the 
fact  that  Massachusetts  would  lose  it.  Again  the 
Federalists  threatened  disunion,  and  seriously  con 
sidered  it  because  of  the  hardship  inflicted  by  the 
commercial  restrictions  imposed  before  and  during 
the  War  of  1812.  The  hardship  was  real,  and  the 
opposition  to  the  measures  was  excusable.  To  pur 
sue  the  subject  further:  in  1832  the  Republicans  of 
South  Carolina  threatened  disunion,  because  they 
thought  the  tariff  weighed  heavily  upon  them.  The 
disturbance  was  local,  and  the  union  sentiment  had 
attained  such  force  that  the  country  accepted  Andrew 
Jackson's  argument  in  his  proclamation  addressed  to 
the  nullifiers  that  an  overt  act  of  disunion  was  trea 
son.  Thus  the  march  had  gone  forward — from  toler 
ance  of  the  union,  to  general  consent  to  it,  to  intoler 
ance  of  opposition  to  it,  to  denial  of  the  right  to  with 
draw  from  it.  In  1815  public  opinion  had  reached 
the  third  stage  and  regarded  disunion  sentiments  with 
intolerance.  Because  of  their  attitude  toward  the 

252 


THE  GOVERNMENT 

Jnion  the  members  of  the  Hartford  Convention  and 
heir  friends  became  marked  men  and  lost  their 
tational  influence.  From  now  on  devotion  to  the 
Jnion  and  the  Constitution  deepened  into  affection 
jid  became  synonymous  with  patriotism. 

One  reason  for  this  forward  movement  was  that  a 
egular  and  simple  way  had  been  found  to  prevent  the 
Constitution  from  being  violated,  and  that  this  way 
vas  now  generally  understood.  It  was  clear  that 
mtil  there  was  a  way  by  which  the  government  could 
)rotect  itself  from  violations  such  violations  were 
ikely  to  be  met  by  withdrawal. 

Suppose  that  a  majority  in  Congress,  being  of  the 
;ame  party  with  the  President,  chooses  to  pass  un 
constitutional  and  oppressive  measures;  what  is  to 
)revent  it?  In  truth,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  it; 
md  if  the  President  signs  them  they  become  law. 
But  is  there  no  way  of  arresting  the  operation  of  such 
aws?  Any  one  would  answer  promptly,  "Yes,  the 
Supreme  Court  will  declare  them  void."  In  1798, 
lowever,  few  people  would  have  made  that  answer, 
md  in  that  year  Congress  passed  despotic  measures 
langerous  to  liberty  and  believed  by  a  great  part  of 
;he  people  to  be  palpably  unconstitutional;  and  the 
President  signed  them,  and  they  became  laws.  They 
lecreed  that  the  President  could  send  out  of  the 
Jnited  States  any  alien  whom  he  might  consider  to 
3e  dangerous  to  the  public  peace  and  safety.  There 
;vas  no  appeal.  He  could  have  sent  away  all  the  aliens 
jvhom  he  did  not  like  under  the  pretense  that  their 
presence  was  harmful  to  public  tranquillity.  The  ob 
ject  of  the  law  was  not  to  prevent  paupers,  criminals, 

253 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

diseased  persons,  and  members  of  an  obnoxious  race 
from  settling  in  the  United  States,  but  to  provide  the 
President  with  the  means  of  suppressing  the  voice  of 
antagonism  to  the  measures  of  his  political  party,  some 
of  that  antagonism  having  come  from  aliens  who  had 
recently  settled  in  the  United  States.  At  the  same 
session  of  Congress  another  law  was  passed  requiring  an 
alien  to  live  in  the  United  States  for  at  least  fourteen 
years  before  he  could  be  naturalized  as  a  citizen. 
The  object  of  this  law  was  to  keep  aliens  within  the 
power  of  the  law,  permitting  their  expulsion  as  long 
as  possible.  Then  a  law  was  passed  inflicting  fine 
and  imprisonment  upon  any  one  who  should  utter 
in  speech  or  in  print  scandalous  or  insulting  lan 
guage  against  the  government  or  its  officers.  Free 
speech  and  a  free  press  could  be  silenced  by  this 
law. 

Where  was  relief  from  the  operation  of  these  laws 
to  be  sought?  The  Supreme  Court  did  not  then 
command,  nor  did  it  deserve,  general  confidence.  The 
Chief  Justice  was  Oliver  Ellsworth,  who  had,  while 
still  Chief  Justice,  been  sent  on  a  mission  to  France, 
when  the  office  was  essentially  a  political  one.  The 
judges  were  Samuel  Chase,  an  avowed  violent  Feder 
alist  partisan;  Iredell,  Cushing,  and  Paterson,  all 
known  to  be  strong  Federalists.  It  is  beyond  doubt 
that  the  court,  if  the  laws  had  been  brought  before 
it,  would  have  upheld  them.  Thus  far,  in  fact,  it  had 
never  declared  an  act  of  Congress  which  did  not  affect 
the  judiciary  to  be  unconstitutional.  It  was  a  semi- 
political  body,  and  politicians,  as  the  historian  of  the 
court  states,  "bivouacked  in  the  chief -justiceship  on 

254 


THE  GOVERNMENT 

their  march  from  one  political  position  to  another." 
If  the  court  had  upheld  the  laws  one  party  would 
have  murmured  against  the  decision.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  had  declared  them  void  the  other  party 
would  not  have  accepted  the  decision.  In  fact,  pub 
lic  opinion  would  not  have  supported  the  court.  It 
is  fortunate  that  the  authority  was  not  then  subjected 
to  a  strain  which  might  have  destroyed  its  future  use 
fulness.  So,  eliminating  the  court,  the  opponents  of 
the  laws,  by  resolutions  adopted  by  the  legislatures 
of  Virginia  and  Kentucky,  proposed  a  complicated  and 
impracticable  method  of  meeting  violations  of  the 
Constitution.  As  the  states,  they  said,  had  ratified 
the  Constitution,  it  was  their  creation,  and  they  had 
power  over  it.  Consequently,  when  an  obnoxious, 
oppressive,  and  unconstitutional  law  was  passed  the 
states  could  arrest  its  operations  within  their  respec 
tive  borders.  To  this  proposition  all  the  New  Eng 
land  states,  New  York,  and  Delaware  replied  in  dis 
sent;  but  the  rest  of  the  country  probably  agreed  to 
it.  In  1814  New  England  put  forward  the  same  doc 
trine,  and  no  state  replied  to  it.  There  was  general 
apathy  toward  the  theory,  because  a  power  had  been 
developed  in  which  all  had  confidence,  which  would 
guard  the  fundamental  law  from  violation.  In  1803 
John  Marshall,  the  Chief  Justice,  handed  down  the 
decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  in  which  it  asserted 
for  the  first  time  that  it  was  the  right  and  duty  of 
the  court  to  pass  upon  the  constitutionality  of  acts 
of  Congress,  and  if  they  were  unconstitutional  to 
declare  them  void.  It  is  true  that  the  framers  of 
the  Constitution  had  always  believed  that  the  court 

255 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

had  this  power,  but  they  had  no  idea  how  its  exercise 
would  operate.  Here,  as  in  all  government  affairs, 
the  personal  element  entered  as  an  important  factor. 
The  court  of  John  Marshall  and  his  associates,  among 
whom  were  now  several  jurists  who  had  no  political 
record,  could  do  with  safety  what  Oliver  Ellsworth 
and  his  partisan  associates  would  have  done  with 
peril. 

By  1815  the  functions  of  the  several  branches  of 
the  government  were  understood,  but  the  second 
chamber  of  Congress,  the  Senate,  was  looked  upon 
as  of  less  importance  than  it  became  in  the  public 
view  at  a  later  day.  For  this  fact  it  had  itself  to 
thank.  Had  the  first  sessions  been  open  to  the  pub 
lic,  as  the  sessions  of  the  House  were,  it  would  have 
had  public  influence  equal  or  superior  to  that  of  the 
House.  It  was  supposed  that  it  would  occupy  high 
position  in  the  new  government,  and  at  first  the  ablest 
characters  sought  admission  to  it.  The  first  Senate 
was  a  strong  body  in  its  personnel.  Oliver  Ellsworth, 
George  Read,  Charles  Carroll,  William  Paterson, 
Robert  Morris,  Rufus  King,  Richard  Henry  Lee,  and 
James  Monroe  were  among  the  members.  But  it 
held  its  sessions  in  secret,  so  that  it  might  not  be  in 
fluenced  by  public  censure  or  favor.  In  consequence, 
it  could  not  exert  public  influence  itself.  It  exercised 
its  power  untrammeled,  but  it  deprived  itself  of  power. 
Wise  action  taken  in  secret  and  eloquent  speeches 
which  nobody  heard  were  wasted.  The  public,  being 
ignorant  of  what  it  was  doing,  became  indifferent  to 
it  or  perhaps  suspicious  of  it.  Thus  the  impression 
at  the  beginning  of  the  operation  of  the  government 

256 


THE  GOVERNMENT 

was  not  favorable  to  the  Senate ;  and,  being  a  neglected 
or  even  unpopular  body,  there  was  no  eagerness  to 
serve  in  it,  and  the  membership  fell  off  in  quality. 
John  Vining  took  George  Read's  place;  John  Henry, 
Charles  Carroll's;  William  Bingham  that  of  Robert 
Morris;  and  so  on.  On  February  20, 1794,  the  Senate 
opened  its  doors  to  the  public,  but  it  took  some  years 
to  overcome  the  popular  indifference  which  had  come 
in  the  beginning.  In  1815  it  held  very  few  members 
who  were  of  the  first  rank  of  public  men.  Henry  Clay 
had  been  in  the  Senate  from  1806  to  1807,  and  again 
for  a  year  from  February  5,  1810,  to  March  3,  1811, 
when  he  resigned  to  go  into  the  House,  because  from 
the  House  he  could  lead  the  country.  For  the  next 
ten  years  the  obscurity  of  the  Senate  continued;  but 
in  1823  Thomas  H.  Benton,  Martin  Van  Buren,  and 
Robert  Y.  Hayne  were  there.  In  1827  Daniel  Webster 
entered;  in  1831  Henry  Clay  returned ;  and  they  were 
joined  in  1832  by  Calhoun.  The  pre-eminence  of  the 
Senate  was  settled. 

As  I  have  said,  everybody  took  an  interest  in  public 
affairs;  but  as  the  "era  of  good  feeling"  began  there 
were  no  radical  differences  of  opinion  on  political  sub 
jects  and  no  issues  before  the  people  which  they  re 
garded  as  involving  vital  principles.  As  a  conse 
quence,  politics  descended  to  a  lower  level  than  it 
had  occupied  before.  The  heroic  age  had  passed, 
and  we  were  entering  upon  the  day  of  small  things. 
We  were  about  to  illustrate  the  truth  that  when  a 
country  is  happy  its  history  is  dull.  The  large 
things  had  been  disposed  of,  and,  issues  failing, 
the  interest  now  centered  in  the  officers.  The  chron- 

17  257 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

icier  of  the  time  must  concern  himself  with  a 
"dull,  dismal  labyrinth'*  of  politicians'  activities, 
which  they  covered  over  with  a  cloak  of  cant, 
but  which  had  as  their  only  object  the  gaining  of 
offices. 


XXVI 

THE   PRESIDENT 

IN  the  early  days  of  the  operation  of  the  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States  there  was  a  latent  fear 
that  the  President  would  sooner  or  later  develop  into 
a  king.  He  had  so  many  functions  such  as  the  old 
king  had  exercised;  he  had  so  much  authority  over 
others;  his  general  primacy  was  so  well  defined  that 
it  required  little  imagination  to  picture  him  using 
his  power  so  as  to  extend  it  and  continue  it.  Con 
fidence  that  the  office  was  a  safe  one  and  would  not 
absorb  the  other  functions  of  the  government  came 
as  a  consequence  of  the  unselfish  patriotism  of  the 
incumbents.  In  fact,  the  Constitution  left  some 
important  features  of  the  new  government  almost 
at  the  mercy  of  the  individuals  who  should  first  be 
intrusted  with  the  responsibility  of  putting  them  in 
operation.  An  ambitious  man  being  President  might 
have  continued  in  office  for  more  than  two  terms; 
there  was  nothing  in  the  law  to  prevent  his  re-election 
as  long  as  he  lived;  he  was  commander-in-chief  of  the 
army  and  the  navy;  it  might  have  required  a  revolu 
tion  to  dislodge  him.  But  the  first  President  com 
manded  universal  confidence.  It  was  known  that  he 
preferred  farming  to  governing  and  that  he  would 
go  back  to  his  crops  as  soon  as  he  could.  The  power 

259 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

of  the  Presidency  actually  diminished  under  John 
Adams.  He  left  the  ordinary  duties  of  the  office  to 
his  subordinates.  He  was  surrounded  by  faction, 
and  the  strength  of  the  opposition  party  was  growing 
steadily.  Thomas  Jefferson,  who  succeeded  him,  was 
the  personification  of  opposition  to  large  governmental 
powers.  Unless  he  turned  traitor  to  every  political 
principle  which  he  had  ever  uttered  he  could^be  de 
pended  upon  not  to  stretch  the  functions  of  the 
Presidency.  He  used  them  actively  and  passed  them 
on  in  good  working  order  to  his  successor.  Nothing 
had  yet  occurred  to  alarm  the  people.  James  Madi 
son's  record  in  public  life  was  a  guaranty  that  he 
would  preserve  the  balance  of  power  in  the  govern 
ment.  It  was  he  who  had  proposed  in  the  convention 
which  framed  the  Constitution  that  there  should  be 
a  President  and  had  defined  his  duties.  His  ambi 
tion  was  to  see  that  the  government,  whose  frame  had 
come  from  his  hands,  should  prove  a  success.  So,  by 
1815  there  was  a  feeling  of  confidence  in  the  institu 
tion  of  the  Presidency,  for  nothing  had  yet  occurred 
to  arouse  apprehension  that  a  President  would  try 
to  deprive  the  people  of  their  liberties. 

To  everybody  the  President  was  the  most  impor 
tant  man  in  the  country.  There  were  a  few  ignorant 
people  who  could  not  have  named  the  Secretary  of 
State;  there  were  many  more  who  could  not  have 
named  the  Chief  Justice;  but  no  one  could  have  been 
found  who  did  not  know  that  the  President  was 
James  Madison.  Thus  far  the  Presidents  had  been 
men  of  broad  and  accepted  reputation,  to  whom  the 
office  had  come  as  the  climax  of  long  public  service. 

260 


THE  PRESIDENT 

There  had  only  been  four  of  them;  the  republic  was 
very  young;  and  the  fourth  was  less  familiarly  known 
to  the  great  body  of  the  people  than  any  of  his  pred 
ecessors  had  been.  Yet  he  had  had  a  longer  public 
career  than  any  of  them. 

In  1768,  when  he  was  seventeen  years  old,  James 
Madison  entered  the  sophomore  class  at  Princeton 
College,  and  he  and  several  of  his  classmates  founded 
the  American  Whig  Society  for  the  purpose  of  debat 
ing  questions  of  government.  In  1836,  when  he  was 
eighty-five  years  old,  he  wrote  his  last  message, 
"Advice  to  My  Country,'*  in  which  he  admonished 
posterity  to  cherish  and  perpetuate  the  union  of  the 
states.  During  the  whole  of  this  long  period,  for 
sixty-eight  years,  he  was  continuously  concerned  with 
problems  affecting  the  government  of  America.  He 
began  his  public  service  in  1774,  and  terminated  it 
when  he  left  the  Presidency  in  1817.  During  a  period 
of  forty-three  years  he  had  been  almost  continuously 
in  public  office.  There  was  no  man  in  the  United 
States  to  whom  the  title  of  statesman  could  so  ap 
propriately  be  applied. 

Some  of  the  description  of  a  great  statesman  which 
Buckle  gives  in  his  analysis  of  the  talents  of  Burke 
applies  to  Madison.  He  employed  his  learning  with 
sobriety,  and  his  political  principles  were  practical. 
Although  his  mind  was  stored  with  ample  material 
for  generalization,  as  a  legislator  he  did  not  generalize. 
He  regarded  statesmanship  as  an  empirical  science. 
He  was  well  aware  that  in  political  practice  the  states 
man  must  deal  with  human  nature,  human  weaknesses, 
and  human  passions,  and  that  his  function  is  to  direct 

261 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

or  follow,  not  to  force,  public  inclination.  He  was 
fully  alive  to  the  distinction  between  the  broad  gen 
eralizations  of  philosophy  and  the  principles  of  poli 
tics.  He  never  doubted  for  a  moment  that  the  peo 
ple  were  his  masters.  So  much  of  Buckle's  picture  of 
the  statesman's  mind  he  realized;  but  not  all  of 
Burke's  political  code,  as  Buckle  expounds  it,  fitted 
him.  He  would  have  agreed  that  political  principles 
were  but  the  product  of  human  reason;  but  he  would 
have  denied  that  it  was  a  statesman's  duty  "to  shape 
his  own  conduct,  not  according  to  his  own  principles, 
but  according  to  the  wishes  of  the  people  for  whom 
he  legislates  and  whom  he  is  bound  to  obey."  He 
would  have  insisted  that  a  statesman  should  shape 
his  conduct  according  to  his  principles  and  leave  the 
people  to  remove  him  from  his  office  if  his  conduct 
ran  counter  to  their  wishes.  He  would  have  insisted 
upon  the  validity  of  general  principles  in  politics,  and 
he  would  have  denied  that  it  was  not  an  object  of 
government  to  preserve  particular  institutions,  if  those 
institutions  were,  in  his  view,  essential  to  the  preserva 
tion  of  principles.  In  fact,  no  American  statesman 
would  have  proclaimed  that  he  must  obey  the  public 
demand,  even  if  it  required  from  him  action  which 
he  believed  to  be  wrong  in  principle.  The  public 
itself  would  have  withdrawn  its  confidence  from  an 
agent  who  obeyed  it  and  at  the  same  time  declared 
that  he  believed  the  action  it  required  of  him  was 
wrong.  It  would  have  regarded  his  course  as  im 
moral.  It  required  that  its  agent  should  have  a  con 
science,  or,  at  any  rate,  should  make  it  believe  that 
he  had.  It  recognized  no  distinction  between  polit- 

262 


THE  PRESIDENT 

ical  morality  and  private  morality.  What  was  wrong 
in  private  life  was  wrong  in  public  life.  The  political 
principles  of  Madison  were  the  political  principles  of 
those  whom  he  represented.  If  he  and  they  had  not 
so  believed  they  would  have  parted  company. 

The  President  was  a  man  of  versatile  scholarship 
and  interests.  He  knew  French  and  Italian;  he  had 
studied  Hebrew;  he  kept  up  his  knowledge  of  the 
classical  languages.  He  had  a  taste  for  art,  as  his 
house  at  Montpelier  demonstrated.  It  was  designed 
for  him  by  Thornton,  and  is  a  model  of  good  taste  in 
architecture.  The  interior  was  decorated  with  many 
works  of  art,  some  of  which  were  of  real  excellence — 
Cardelli's  busts  of  Jefferson  and  Adams,  for  example, 
and  the  marble  medallion  of  himself  by  Ceracchi. 
The  grounds  about  the  house  were  laid  out  artistical 
ly,  and  repay  the  study  of  the  landscape-gardener  at 
the  present  day.  He  delighted  in  the  beauties  of 
nature,  with  which  he  had  been  surrounded  from  in 
fancy.  He  was  a  scientific  farmer  and  wrote  learned 
addresses  on  agriculture.  He  was  learned  in  theology, 
having  at  one  time  studied  with  the  thought  of  be 
coming  a  clergyman,  and  had  read  the  French  and 
English  philosophers  and  skeptics.  He  was  a  natural 
ist,  read  Buffon,  and  added  to  Buffon's  information. 
He  knew  something  of  ethnology,  especially  with  ref 
erence  to  the  origin  of  the  Indians.  He  studied  law; 
but  this  science,  political  economy,  and  social  science 
all  belonged  to  his  erudition  in  political  science,  in 
which  it  is  not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  he  had 
exhausted  the  record  of  human  experience  and  rea 
soning. 

263 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Happily  for  his  usefulness,  Madison  understood  the 
people  of  Virginia  thoroughly,  and  was  in  complete 
sympathy  with  them,  so  he  had  a  constituency  upon 
which  he  could  rely.  He  was  always  a  little  in  ad 
vance  of  them,  and  on  occasion  skilfully  led  them 
forward.  He  did  so  when,  using  an  agent  to  act  for 
him,  he  obtained  from  the  legislature  the  invitation 
to  the  states  for  a  general  convention  to  consider 
interstate  trade  regulations,  when  the  legislature  was 
jealous  of  increasing  federal  power.  From  this  in 
vitation  came  the  Annapolis  convention,  from  which 
came  the  Philadelphia  convention  which  framed  the 
Constitution. 

Madison  was  accused  of  violating  his  convictions 
when  he  broke  with  Alexander  Hamilton  and  joined 
Jefferson's  party  when  the  opposing  parties  formed, 
but  there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have  been 
convinced  that  Hamilton's  system  of  government  was 
dangerous  and  unwise.  All  Virginia  and  most  of 
America  were  so  convinced.  But  if  he  believed  that 
the  charges  made  against  Hamilton,  in  the  effort  to 
break  his  power,  were  true,  his  brains  were  working 
with  unaccustomed  feebleness.  When  men  engage  in 
political  warfare  they  commonly  lose  their  heads  and 
something  of  their  morals  and  deal  foul  blows  as  well 
as  fair — 

In  wretched  interchange  of  wrong  for  wrong 

'Midst  a  contentious  world,  striving  where  none  are  strong. 

This  period  of  political  warfare  was  the  weak  point 
in  Madison's  career.  The  utmost  that  can  be  said 
(and  it  is  not  much)  is  that  he  was  not  as  vindictive 

264 


THE  PRESIDENT 

nor  as  vituperative  as  most  of  his  contemporaries 
were. 

To  the  generation  of  statesmen  who  were  rising  in 
1815  Madison  was  already  one  of  the  figures  in  the 
pantheon.  The  chief  of  these  new  statesmen  was 
Henry  Clay.  In  his  early  life  he  had  followed  Madi 
son,  and  he  enjoyed  the  friendship  and  confidence  of 
the  President.  In  1829,  when  Clay  was  at  the  height 
of  his  popularity,  in  the  course  of  a  private  conversa 
tion  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion  that  Madison  was  our 
greatest  statesman  and  the  first  of  American  political 
writers.  This  opinion  of  his  writings  had  reference 
to  his  numbers  of  The  Federalist,  his  pamphlets, 
speeches,  articles,  and  state  papers.  The  most  nota 
ble  of  his  writings,  the  journal  of  the  debates  in  the 
convention  which  framed  the  Constitution  and  the 
explanatory  introduction,  had  not  yet  appeared. 

I  am  not  prepared  to  say  that  Clay's  opinion  was 
too  strong.  The  writings  of  Madison  cover  a  great 
range  of  subjects,  which  they  treat  with  philosophic 
wisdom.  At  the  present  day  there  is  hardly  a  de 
cision  of  the  Supreme  Court  dealing  with  constitu 
tional  construction  which  does  not  quote  them  as 
authority.  They  contain  a  wealth  of  authentic  nar 
rative  history  besides,  and  judicious  discussions  of 
those  problems  of  government  which  are  perennial. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  was  the 
crowning  work  of  the  revolutionary  period  of  our 
history.  It  preserved  for  posterity  the  liberty  which 
the  Revolution  won.  Madison  was  the  chief  agent 
in  calling  together  the  convention  which  framed  it. 
He  drew  up  the  plan  of  government  upon  which  the 

265 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

convention  based  its  work.  He  was  confessedly  the 
leading  member  of  the  convention.  He  was  the  chief 
agent  in  accomplishing  the  ratification  of  the  Con 
stitution.  He  was  the  leader  of  the  House  of  Repre 
sentatives,  and  consequently  of  Congress,  when  it 
adopted  the  measures  which  put  the  Constitution  in 
operation.  In  constructive  statesmanship  no  other 
American  had  a  record  the  equal  of  his. 

His  course  while  he  was  President  did  not  add  to 
his  reputation.  For  the  first  time  he  was  in  an  office 
where  success  required  large  administrative  talents, 
and  he  had  never  had  administrative  experience. 
He  found  himself  at  the  head  of  a  nation  in  arms,  and 
here  his  deficiencies  were  conspicuous.  He  hated  war. 
All  his  life  he  had  been  searching  for  governmental 
policies  which  would  render  war  unnecessary.  With 
out  enthusiasm  for  fighting  he  could  not  inspire  the 
nation  with  enthusiasm  for  the  war.  He  watched  the 
law  and  kept  his  own  powers  within  cramped  bounds. 
What  the  occasion  demanded  was  a  lusty  warrior 
who  would  take  all  needed  authority  and  settle  the 
question  of  legality  afterward.  The  war  having  ter 
minated,  the  government  had  suffered  no  harm — 
there  was  that  much  to  be  said  in  favor  of  Madison's 
caution. 

The  position  which  he  occupied  with  the  people 
was  peculiar.  They  held  him  in  respect,  but  he  was 
hardly  more  than  a  name  to  them.  He  was  the  friend 
and  coadjutor  of  Jefferson,  and  would  carry  on  Jef 
ferson's  system  of  government.  He  had  been  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Continental  Congress,  and  was  the  father 
of  the  Constitution.  They  felt  grateful  to  him  and 

266 


THE  PRESIDENT 

had  confidence  in  him,  and  that  was  all.  How  could 
it  be  otherwise  with  a  man  who  was  only  five  feet  six 
and  a  quarter  inches  tall,  with  a  small,  wizened  body 
and  a  weak  voice? 

His  countenance  was  solemn  and  not  handsome. 
So  far  as  the  public  knew  him  he  was  always  an  old, 
sad-eyed  man.  There  was  never  any  of  the  dash  and 
fire  of  youth  in  him.  He  made  no  open-air  speeches, 
except  among  his  immediate  constituency  in  Vir 
ginia.  He  never  courted  public  attention.  All  of  his 
published  speeches  and  state  papers  were  able  com 
positions,  solid,  closely  reasoned,  profound,  and  state 
ly,  but  with  no  illumination  from  catching  phrases, 
no  inspiring  appeals,  nothing  to  warm  the  public  heart. 

He  had  his  enemies,  but  he  himself  hated  no  one, 
and  those  who  disliked  him  were  not  many  nor  were 
they  bitter.  At  one  time  they  said  he  was  in  secret 
league  with  Napoleon,  but  they  could  hardly  have 
believed  so  nonsensical  a  charge.  They  said  he  sold 
himself  to  the  Clay  Republicans,  exchanging  his  war 
message  to  Congress  for  a  renomination  for  the  Presi 
dency,  and  this  shocking  accusation  many  people  be 
lieved  and  some  historians  have  repeated.  It  was 
never  proved,  and  recently  discovered  documents 
have  disproved  it.  His  character  was  assailed  less 
than  that  of  any  of  his  contemporaries  of  similar 
public  experience,  and  was,  in  fact,  unassailable. 
The  dislike  for  him  entertained  by  those  who  had 
suffered  from  the  commercial  restrictions  of  his  and 
Jefferson's  administration  was  mitigated  after  the 
peace,  when  most  of  them  became  prosperous  again, 
and  he  went  into  retirement  pursued  by  no  anathemas. 

267 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

It  was  his  misfortune  to  be  made  fun  of.  Washing 
ton  Irving,  going  to  Washington  in  search  of  an  office 
in  1809,  wrote  in  a  familiar  letter: 

Mrs.  Madison  is  a  fine,  portly,  buxom  dame,  who  had  a  smile 
and  a  pleasant  word  for  everybody.  Her  sisters,  Mrs.  Cutts  and 
Mrs.  Washington,  are  like  two  merry  wives  of  Windsor,  but  as  to 
Jemmy  Madison — ah!  poor  Jemmy!  he  is  but  a  withered  little 
apple- John. 

When  war  was  declared  Richard  Rush,  then  the 
Comptroller  of  the  Treasury,  wrote  to  his  father  that 
the  President  had  visited  the  War  and  Navy  Depart 
ments,  "stimulating  everything  in  a  manner  worthy 
of  a  little  commander-in-chief,  with  his  little  round 
hat  and  huge  cockade."  It  is  a  pity  for  his  fame  that 
he  should  have  been  obliged  to  be  "a  little  commander- 
in-chief." 

After  the  capture  of  Washington  some  verses  were 
published  in  New  York  in  the  style  of  John  Gilpin, 
entitled  "The  Bladensburg  Races."  The  President 
is  made  to  say  to  his  wife: 

Quoth  Madison  unto  his  spouse, 

"Though  frighted  we  have  been 
These  two  last  tedious  weeks,  yet  we 

No  enemy  have  seen." 

To  which,  after  another  verse,  his  wife  replies : 

"To-morrow,"  then  quoth  she,  "We'll  fly 

As  fast  as  we  can  pour 
Northward,  unto  Montgomery, 

All  in  our  coach  and  four. 

"My  sister  Cutts,  and  Cutts,  and  I, 

And  Cutts's  children  three, 
Will  fill  the  coach;   so  you  must  ride 

On  horseback  after  we — " 
268 


MRS.    JAMES    MADISON 
From  an  original  painting  by   Gilbert  Stuart 


JAMES    MADISON 


THE  PRESIDENT 

This  last  verse  was  an  allusion  to  Mrs.  Madison's 
sister  and  family,  who  frequented  the  White  House 
during  the  Madison  administration. 

The  flight  progresses  from  Bladensburg 

Then  might  all  people  well  discern 

The  gallant  little  man, 
His  sword  did  thump  behind  his  back, 

So  merrily  he  ran. 

In  private  life,  especially  in  Washington,  Madison 
played  rather  a  secondary  part.  Strangers  who  went 
to  the  receptions  at  the  White  House  gave  long  de 
scriptions  of  Mrs.  Madison,  and  had  only  a  perfunc 
tory  sentence  about  the  President.  He  was  a  very 
modest  man  and  did  not  shine  in  a  large  assemblage. 
He  liked  to  see  his  wife  the  center  of  the  circle,  and 
was  content  himself  to  stand  quietly  on  the  edge. 
He  never  talked  for  show.  Serious  visitors  who  sought 
for  information  on  political  history  found  him  an 
inexhaustible  mine  of  information,  frank,  communi 
cative,  and  amiable;  but  casual  visitors  who  hoped 
to  hear  only  words  of  wisdom  from  him,  and  to  carry 
away  with  them  some  remarks  which  fitted  his  char 
acter  as  the  father  of  the  Constitution,  were  apt  to 
be  disappointed.  In  fact,  they  might  dine  at  his 
table  and  hear  nothing  but  banter  from  him  during 
the  whole  dinner.  After  dinner,  if  the  men  who  sat 
around  the  table  drinking  their  wine  were  his  friends, 
the  ladies  from  the  adjoining  room  might  hear  loud 
roars  of  laughter  from  the  President's  guests,  who  were 
enjoying  the  President's  broad  and  irresistible  jokes. 
The  sorrowful  hazel  eyes  were  often  lightened  by  a 

269 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

mischievous  twinkle,  and  the  solemn  mouth  covered 
remarkably  good  teeth,  which  made  the  whole  coun 
tenance  look  gay  when  he  smiled. 

To  what  extent  was  the  President  typical  of  his 
time?  He  belonged  to  the  days  which  were  passing 
and  not  to  those  which  were  coming.  When  he 
left  the  Presidency  he  retired  definitely  from  pub 
lic  life,  as  his  predecessors  in  that  office  had  done, 
and  the  partisan  personal  bickering  which  soon  be 
came  the  most  conspicuous  feature  of  politics  did  not 
interest  him.  When  the  Missouri  bill  came  up,  and 
ten  years  later  the  nullification  movement,  he  raised 
his  voice  and  spoke  his  views;  but  in  spite  of  every 
effort  no  one  could  get  from  him  an  opinion  on  the 
merits  of  the  various  politicians  who  were  seeking 
public  favor.  His  mind  was  occupied  with  the  past, 
with  the  events  of  the  Revolution,  but  particularly 
with  the  making  of  the  Constitution,  its  meaning  and 
the  intention  of  its  makers,  and  on  these  points  his 
pronouncements  were  accepted  as  oracular. 

But,  as  I  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter,  his 
administration,  as  it  progressed,  set  steadily  away 
from  the  old  order,  and  before  it  closed  became  fairly 
representative  of  the  new.  When  it  closed  William 
H.  Crawford  was  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury;  the 
position  of  Secretary  of  War  was  vacant  for  the  time, 
Crawford  having  been  transferred  from  that  office. 
The  Attorney-General  was  Richard  Rush,  and  the 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  was  Benjamin  W.  Crownin- 
shield.  Crowninshield  represented  the  new  repub 
licanism  of  New  England  and  the  departure  of  that 
section  from  the  Tory  federalism  which  had  hitherto 

270 


THE  PRESIDENT 

dominated  it.  Rush  was  a  Pennsylvania  Republi 
can,  a  member  of  an  old  and  influential  family  in 
Philadelphia,  where  old  families  still  had  influence. 

The  genius  of  the  new  order  in  politics  was  the 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  William  H.  Crawford 
was  educated  for  the  law,  but  became  a  member  of 
the  legislature  of  Georgia  when  he  was  twenty-one 
years  of  age.  He  came  to  the  Senate  and  served  for 
a  time  as  president  pro  tempore.  Madison  sent  him 
as  Minister  to  France  in  1813,  and  he  entered  the 
Cabinet  in  1815,  first  as  Secretary  of  War,  from  which 
office  he  went  to  the  Treasury  Department  in  1816. 
He  served  till  John  Quincy  Adams  became  President 
in  1825.  He  was  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency  in 
1824,  and  came  near  being  elected  by  the  House  of 
Representatives.  He  was  a  man  of  some  parts  as  a 
lawyer,  and  closed  his  long  career  as  a  federal  judge. 
He  was  a  large  man  of  bluff,  democratic  personality. 
He  had  a  large  circle  of  personal  friends  who  were 
really  devoted  to  him  and  thought  him  a  great  man. 
As  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  he  had  many  subordi 
nates,  and  his  activities  among  minor  public  officers 
extended  beyond  his  department.  In  1820  he  suc 
ceeded  in  having  an  act  passed  prescribing  four  years 
as  the  term  of  office  of  United  States  attorneys,  col 
lectors  of  customs,  and  a  number  of  other  minor 
officials.  Thus,  automatically  and  without  the  trouble 
of  dismissal,  a  large  number  of  offices  were  constantly 
falling  vacant,  there  was  a  constant  stream  of  appli 
cants,  there  was  incessant  flow  and  life  among  the 
rank  and  file  of  politicians.  He  systematically  em 
ployed  the  officers  of  the  Treasury  Department  and 

271 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

any  other  officers  over  whom  he  had  influence  as 
agents  to  further  his  political  fortunes.  He  was  the 
first  public  man  to  erect  an  effective  political  machine. 
He  became  a  powerful  factor  in  the  politics  of  the 
country.  He  called  himself  a  Jeffersonian  Democrat, 
but  he  was  not  identified  with  any  public  measures 
involving  broad  principles.  His  management  of  the 
finances  of  the  country  was  not  notable.  His  main 
interest  was  in  the  manipulation  of  political  groups 
with  a  view  to  securing  the  offices,  and,  having  secured 
them,  to  so  administer  them  as  to  retain  them.  Poli 
tics  was  with  him  and  his  followers  simply  a  contest 
for  office.  The  forces  behind  men  like  Rush  and 
Crowninshield  were  insignificant  compared  with  the 
force  behind  Crawford. 


XXVII 

PATRIOTISM 

WHEN  Benjamin  Franklin  was  shown  one  of  the 
medallions  of  the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati  in 
1784,  and  was  told  that  the  design  had  been  criticized 
because  it  more  resembled  a  turkey  than  an  eagle,  he 
said  he  wished  it  had  been  a  turkey. 

"For,  in  truth,  the  turkey  is  in  comparison  a  much 
more  respectable  bird,  and  withal  a  true  original  native 
of  America.  Eagles  have  been  found  in  all  countries; 
but  the  turkey  is  peculiar  to  ours.  .  .  .  He  is,  be 
sides  (though  a  little  vain  and  silly,  it  is  true,  but 
none  the  worse  emblem  for  that),  a  bird  of  courage, 
and  would  not  hesitate  to  attack  a  grenadier  of  the 
British  guards  who  should  presume  to  invade  his 
farm-yard  with  a  red  coat  on." 

The  patriarch  had  the  same  idea  that  possessed  all 
his  fellow-countrymen — everything  must  be  our  own, 
even  to  the  symbols  of  heraldry.  But  he  was  a  little 
unjust  toward  the  eagle,  for  the  Continental  Congress, 
in  adopting  that  bird  as  the  central  feature  of  the 
American  arms,  had  required  it  to  be  "the  American 
Eagle  displayed  proper,"  meaning  the  bald  eagle, 
which  is  found  only  on  this  continent. 

The  spirit  of  Americanism  was  manifested  every 
where.  The  President  should  not  become  a  king, 

is  273 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

such  as  other  countries  had,  but  a  chief  executive 
with  circumscribed  powers,  a  chief  such  as  no  other 
country  had.  The  government  must  be  our  own  in 
all  respect.  Its  various  features  might  resemble  the 
features  of  other  governments,  but  they  were  not 
identical.  The  same  spirit  went  into  lesser  things; 
nothing  was  acceptable  unless  it  bore  the  American 
stamp.  Dictionaries,  the  very  language,  novels,  po 
etry,  plays,  even  art,  education,  prison  discipline, 
medicine,  the  churches,  must  be  American  if  they 
were  to  find  favor  and  success  on  this  continent. 
Happily,  we  were  isolated  and  could  develop  unvexed 
by  any  rival  civilization.  The  sea  was  our  eastern 
boundary;  on  most  of  our  north  and  all  of  our  west 
was  an  uninhabited  empire;  and  on  the  south  were 
an  inferior  people  who  made  no  impression  upon  the 
people  of  the  United  States,  except,  by  the  contrast 
of  their  feebleness,  to  make  their  English-speaking 
neighbors  more  certain  of  their  strength.  There  were 
no  rivals  near  us  and  no  foreigners  within  our  borders. 
The  immigrant  came  to  stay.  His  dominating  desire 
was  to  merge  himself  in  American  life.  He  obtained 
American  citizenship  as  soon  as  the  law  allowed  him 
to  do  so.  He  imbibed  American  institutions  and  for 
got  the  institutions  he  had  left  behind  him.  He 
learned  our  language  and  often  failed  to  teach  his 
children  his  own  mother's  tongue.  There  was  al 
ways  present  a  fear  that  the  immigrant  would  inter 
fere  with  the  normal  development  of  American  life, 
but  in  reality  he  became  more  American  than  the 
natives  themselves  and  embraced  the  American  idea 
with  a  convert's  zeal. 

274 


PATRIOTISM 

American  nationality  developed  without  the  over 
shadowing  element  of  personal  loyalty  and  devotion, 
which  is  one  of  the  romantic  features  of  the  history  of 
European  states.  The  blending  of  affection  and  duty 
and  the  personification  of  patriotism  have  given 
much  of  the  poetic  coloring  to  the  history  of  the 
countries  from  which  Americans  came,  and  that  we 
have  lived  our  national  life  without  it  is  one  of  the 
reasons  why  people  who  read  only  for  their  pleasure 
think  our  history  is  dull. 

Far  back  in  the  history  of  the  world  the  patriotism 
was  always  personal,  being,  in  fact,  only  an  enlarge 
ment  of  the  devotion  and  subjection  of  the  child  to 
the  parent.  The  head  of  the  house,  the  patriarch,  the 
leader  of  the  tribe  or  clan,  was  the  protecting  father 
of  his  people.  The  kings  were  always  kings  over  the 
people,  and  not  over  the  land.  The  fact  survives  in 
the  titles  of  some  of  the  monarchs  who  now  reign. 
The  king  of  Belgium  is  King  of  the  Belgians,  of  Den 
mark  is  King  of  Denmark  and  the  Wendes  and  the 
Goths,  of  Sweden  is  King  of  Sweden  and  of  the  Goths 
and  the  Vandals.  In  the  course  of  time  society  ad 
vanced  from  the  nomadic  and  pastoral  stage  and  be 
came  agricultural.  It  gained  its  sustenance  by  culti 
vating  the  soil,  and  became  fixed  in  its  place  of  abode. 
From  this  condition  a  new  idea  of  nationality  arose — 
that  it  was  appurtenant  to  the  place  of  birth  and  resi 
dence  and  was  not  derived  from  personal  subjection 
and  fealty  alone.  From  the  patriarchal  state  had  arisen 
the  doctrine  of  citizenship  by  descent,  by  kinship,  by 
blood — the  jus  sanguinis  of  the  Roman  or  civil  law; 
from  the  agricultural  state  came  the  doctrine  that 

275 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

citizenship  was  based  upon  the  land — the  jus  soli  of 
the  English  or  common  law.  The  newer  doctrine  did 
not  supplant  the  sentiment  of  loyalty  to  a  personal 
sovereign;  but  it  introduced  a  new  element  into  it. 
When  nationality  became  territorial  and  not  wholly 
personal  the  country  took  over  the  loyalty  and  de 
votion  which  before  had  been  monopolized  by  the  pa 
triarch  or  monarch.  Then  the  man  personified  the 
land  where  he  dwelt  and  whence  he  derived  his  sus 
tenance.  It  became  the  fatherland,  and  he  expressed 
his  devotion  to  it  by  giving  it  the  feminine  pronoun 
she  or  her  when  he  spoke  of  it,  as  he  did  when  he 
spoke  of  his  mother  or  his  wife.  Centuries  after  the 
reason  for  it  had  departed  the  old  feeling  of  personal 
loyalty  lingered,  held  in  men's  minds  by  the  survival 
of  an  organization  of  society  which  had  been  based 
upon  it.  It  lingers  yet,  a  survival  of  medieval  times 
without  logical  excuse  in  the  modern  state. 

When  America  was  settled  the  earliest  pioneers 
came  with  the  sentiment  of  personal  loyalty  still  in 
their  minds,  but  here  it  had  nothing  to  feed  upon. 
There  were  no  visible  requirements  by  the  monarch 
of  his  subjects,  no  constant  personal  duties  for  them 
to  perform.  He  was  thousands  of  miles  away.  There 
was  no  royal  court,  no  royal  family,  no  royal  army; 
there  were  no  castles,  no  pageants;  there  was  noth 
ing  to  remind  the  people  of  the  splendor  or  power  of 
their  king.  A  sentiment  cannot  live  indefinitely  upon 
nothing  but  recollection.  The  king  was  only  a  name 
in  America,  and  the  sense  of  personal  loyalty  to  him 
steadily  decreased. 

But  the  European  brought  with  him  also  his  feeling 

276 


PATRIOTISM 

of  attachment  to  the  soil,  and  that  he  transferred 
immediately  to  the  new  soil  which  nurtured  him. 
Thus,  while  the  memory  of  devotion  to  the  old  king 
grew  weak,  the  attachment  to  the  new  country  grew 
strong.  Nevertheless,  when  the  Revolution  came  there 
were  many  Americans  with  whom  the  sense  of  loyalty 
and  duty  was  still  so  strong  that  they  would  not  em 
brace  the  patriot  cause.  For  the  most  part,  however, 
the  loyalists  were  people  who  had  recently  come  to 
America,  or  who  had  recently  been  back  to  England, 
or  had  relatives  there,  or  were  officers  of  the  king,  or 
were  connected  with  the  official  class.  The  great 
body  of  the  people  threw  off  their  personal  allegiance 
without  a  pang  of  regret.  The  crown  had  long  since 
ceased  to  occupy  a  place  in  their  hearts. 

The  attachment  to  the  soil  was  necessarily  an  at 
tachment  to  that  part  of  it  which  the  American  knew, 
and  that  was  his  state  rather  than  the  continent. 
I  have  shown  before  that  the  American  of  1815  did 
not  travel;  that,  in  fact,  he  could  not;  that  he  did 
not  write  many  letters,  as  it  took  so  long  to  get  an 
answer  and  the  expense  of  carriage  was  considerable; 
that  he  married  a  girl  of  his  vicinity  because  he  knew 
none  other;  that  his  schooling,  if  he  got  any,  he  received 
in  his  neighborhood;  that  he  derived  little  information 
from  the  newspapers;  in  short,  that  his  interests  and 
affections  were  circumscribed  by  a  very  small  area. 
Before  1789  the  government  did  nothing  to  enlarge 
his  sphere.  The  Revolution  had  enlarged  it,  and  for 
eight  years  he  had  seen  the  glimpse  of  a  broad  con 
tinental  nationality,  but  he  lost  sight  of  it  afterward. 
A  union  loosely  linked  together  by  a  government 

277 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

which  existed  only  by  sufferance  and  had  no  authority 
or  power  of  its  own;  a  government  over  which  no 
person  presided  as  chief,  which  was  managed  by 
agents  who  had  no  power  to  act  without  orders,  in 
some  sort  a  flimsy  nation  composed  of  thirteen  in 
dependent  parts  any  one  of  which  could  destroy  it 
at  any  time  by  affirmative  action  or  even  by  no  action 
at  all;  a  government  so  constituted  that  it  could  not 
have  any  recognized  leaders — such  a  government  was 
more  calculated  to  stifle  continental  patriotism  than 
to  arouse  it.  When  all  aspiration  for  a  continental 
patriotism  seemed  about  to  die,  by  a  feat  of  states 
manship  it  was  given  a  reviving  stimulant  by  the 
new  government.  This  new  government  operated 
directly  upon  the  individual  and  caused  him  to  feel 
his  duty  to  it;  and  after  a  time  it  awakened  his 
loyalty,  too.  It  had  a  visible  chief  to  preside  over 
it,  and  national  leaders  to  direct  it  and  stimulate 
interest  in  it.  There  was  the  personal  element,  the 
absence  of  which  had  been  one  of  the  weaknesses  of 
the  old  government.  Soon  patriotism  meant  devotion 
to  the  United  States  as  well  as  to  one  state.  By  the 
time  of  the  close  of  the  War  of  1812  patriotism  was 
generally  understood  as  being  continental  as  well  as 
sectional.  As  time  went  on  inventions  and  discover 
ies  made  travel  easy  and  quick,  and  the  communica 
tion  of  intelligence  became  almost  instantaneous,  the 
sections  of  the  country  were  brought  close  together, 
and  the  continental  patriotism  increased  with  great 
rapidity.  After  the  artificial  barrier  of  slavery  which 
stood  in  its  way  had  been  removed  it  became  a  fact 
of  universal  acceptance.  The  people  liked  to  believe 

278 


PATRIOTISM 

that  this  condition  was  fostered  by  the  national  gov 
ernment,  and  soon  after  1815  those  who  wished  to 
please  them,  and  who  truly  represented  them,  fell 
into  the  way  of  putting  the  adjective  "glorious"  in 
front  of  the  word  "Constitution"  whenever  they  spoke 
of  it. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

THE  chief  manuscript  sources  of  this  book  are: 

The  Madison,  Jefferson,  Andrew  Jackson,  Thornton, 
Dolly  Madison,  Margaret  Bayard  Smith  papers;  the  House 
of  Representatives  collection;  the  Benjamin  Rush  lectures; 
note-books  of  Dr.  Edmund  Physick;  autograph  letters  of 
physicians  (Toner  collection);  Shaker  papers;  billing-heads 
of  stage  lines — all  in  the  Library  of  Congress.  Mr.  O.  G. 
Sonneck's  work  on  Early  Opera  in  America,  now  in  press, 
which  he  was  good  enough  to  allow  me  to  see. 

The  newspapers  are: 

New  Haven  Connecticut  Journal,  Richmond  Semi-Weekly 
Enquirer,  Washington  Daily  National  Intelligencer,  New 
York  Evening  Post,  Boston  Gazette,  Charleston  Courier,  New 
York  Spectator,  Paulson's  American  Advertiser,  Philadelphia 
Mercantile  Advertiser,  Norfolk  Herald,  Niles  Weekly  Register 
— all  for  1815  or  approximate  dates. 

The  other  periodicals  are: 

Boston  Weekly  Magazine,  1816;  Evening  Fireside,  Phila 
delphia,  1806;  Columbian  Telescope,  Alexandria,  1819;  Nor 
folk  Repository,  1807;  The  Hive,  Washington,  1811;  North 
American  Review,  1815;  Literary  Magazine,  Philadelphia, 
1807;  Monthly  Anthology,  Boston,  1811;  The  Polyanthos, 
Philadelphia,  1814;  Academic  Recreations ,  New  York,  1815; 
The  American  Review,  Philadelphia,  1812;  The  Eye,  Phila 
delphia,  1808;  Journal  of  the  Times,  Baltimore,  1818;  The 
Portfolio,  Philadelphia,  1815;  Boston  Weekly  Messenger, 
1815;  Atheneum,  Boston,  1817;  Analectic  Magazine,  Phila 
delphia,  1815;  American  Baptist  Magazine,  Boston,  1817; 

280 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Churchman's  Magazine,  Elizabeth-Town,  N.  J.,  1814; 
The  Christian's  Magazine,  New  York,  1811;  Quarterly 
Theological  Magazine,  Burlington,  N.  J.,  1813;  The  Pano- 
plist,  Boston,  1815;  The  Guardian,  New  Haven,  1819; 
The  Latter  Day  Luminary,  Philadelphia,  1818;  The  Adviser, 
or  Vermont  Evangelical  Magazine,  Middlebury,  1815; 
The  Methodist  Magazine,  New  York,  1811;  The  Christian 
Disciple,  Boston,  1815;  The  Almoner,  Lexington,  Ky., 
1814;  The  Christian  Spectator,  New  Haven,  1819;  The 
Alleghany  Magazine,  Meadville,  Pa.,  1816;  The  Christian 
Journal,  New  York,  1817;  The  Christian  Herald,  New  York, 
1816;  The  General  Repository,  Cambridge,  Mass.,  1813. 

Of  general  works: 

Autobiography  of  N.  T.  Hubbard,  New  York,  1875;  The 
Description  of  the  City  of  New  York,  by  James  Hardie,  New 
York,  1827;  Blunt' 's  Stranger's  Guide  to  the  City  of  New 
York,  by  E.  M.  Blunt,  New  York,  1817;  Reminiscences  of 
an  Old  New  Yorker,  by  William  Alexander  Duer,  New  York, 
1867;  Reminiscences  of  an  Octogenarian,  by  Charles  H. 
Haswell,  New  York,  1896;  History  of  the  City  of  New  York, 
by  Martha  J.  Lamb,  New  York,  1877;  New  York,  by 
Theodore  Roosevelt,  New  York,  1891;  Memorial  History 
of  the  City  of  New  York,  edited  by  James  Grant  Wilson, 
New  York,  1892;  Philadelphia,  A  History  of  the  City  and 
Its  People,  by  Ellis  Paxson  Oberholtzer,  Philadelphia,  1912; 
A  Topographical  and  Historical  Description  of  Boston,  by 
Charles  Shaw,  Boston,  1817;  Boston,  by  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge,  New  York,  1891;  Journal  of  William  Maclay, 
edited  by  Edgar  S.  Maclay,  New  York,  1890;  Disunion 
Sentiment  in  Congress  in  1794,  edited  by  Gaillard  Hunt, 
Washington,  1905;  The  Life  of  John  C.  Calhoun,  by  Gail- 
lard  Hunt,  Philadelphia,  1907;  The  Bladensburg  Races  (no 
place  or  date,  but  really  New  York,  1815);  A  Statistical 
View  of  the  Commerce  of  the  United  States,  by  Timothy  Pit- 
kin,  Hartford,  1816;  Treaties  and  Conventions  of  the  United 
States,  Washington,  1873;  Charters  and  Constitutions  of  the 
United  States,  Washington,  1878;  The  U.  S.  Statutes  at 
Large;  The  Laws  of  the  States  (the  Cession  Laws ;  not  the 

281 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

general  compiled  statutes,  which  cannot  be  depended  upon 
for  historical  purposes) ;  The  Histories  of  the  Religious  De 
nominations  in  the  American  Church  History  Series,  New 
York;  Complete  Works  on  Criminal  Jurisprudence,  by  Ed 
ward  Livingston,  New  York,  1873. 

For  general  descriptions: 

An  Historical  View  of  the  United  States,  by  E.  Mackenzie, 
New  Castle  upon  Tyne,  1819;  Apergu  des  Etats-Ums,by 
Louis  A.  Felix,  Baron  de  Beaujour,  Paris,  1814;  Travels  in 
America,  by  Thomas  Ashe,  Newburyport,  1808;  A  Sum 
mary  View  of  America,  by  Isaac  Candler,  London,  1824; 
A  Tour  in  America,  by  Richard  Parkinson,  London,  1805; 
A  Short  System  of  the  Geography  of  the  World,  by  Nathaniel 
Dwight,  Hartford,  1795;  Universal  Geography,  by  Mr. 
Malte-Brun,  Philadelphia,  1827;  An  American  Universal 
Geography,  by  Jedidiah  Morse,  Charlestown,  1819;  A  New 
System  of  Modern  Geography,  by  Sidney  E.  Morse,  Boston, 
1822 ;  The  World  As  It  Is,  by  Samuel  Perkins,  New  Haven, 
1837;  Elements  of  Geography,  by  Benjamin  Workman, 
Philadelphia,  1816. 

For  the  Madisons,  the  White  House,  and  the  City  of 
Washington : 

The  Court  Circles  of  the  Republic,  by  Mrs.  E.  F.  Ellet, 
Hartford,  1869;  The  First  Forty  Years  of  Washington  So 
ciety,  by  Margaret  Bayard  Smith,  Gaillard  Hunt,  editor, 
New  York,  1906;  The  Life  of  James  Madison,  by  Gaillard 
Hunt,  New  York,  1902;  Dolly  Madison,  by  Maud  Wilder 
Goodwin,  New  York,  1896;  Memoirs  and  Letters  of  Dolly 
Madison,  edited  by  her  grandniece,  Boston  and  New  York, 
1911. 

Concerning  women: 

Letters  on  Female  Character,  by  Mrs.  Virginia  Cary, 
Hartford,  1831 ;  The  Discussion,  or  the  Character,  Education, 
&c.,  of  Women,  Boston,  1837;  The  Lady's  Pocket  Library, 
Philadelphia,  1792;  The  Female  Friend,  or  the  Duties  of 

Christian    Virgins,    by    F L ,    Baltimore,    1809; 

Familiar 'Letters  to  Females,  by  a  Lady,  Boston,  1834;  Vin 
dication  of  the  Rights  of  Women,  by  Mary  Wollstonecraft, 

282 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Philadelphia,  1794;  Nuptial  Dialogues  and  Debates,  by 
Edward  Ward,  Philadelphia,  1811;  Sketches  of  the  Fair 
Sex,  by  a  Friend  of  the  Sex,  Gettysburg,  1812;  Epistles  on 
Women,  by  Lucy  Aiken,  Boston,  1810;  Women  in  All  Ages 
and  Nations,  by  Thomas  L.  Nichols,  New  York,  1854;  The 
American  Lady,  Philadelphia,  1836;  The  Excellency  of  the 
Female  Character  Vindicated,  by  T.  Branagan,  Harrisburg, 
1828;  Letters  to  a  Young  Lady  in  which  the  Duties,  &c.,  of 
Women  are  Considered,  by  Mrs.  Jane  West,  New  York, 
1806;  The  Young  Woman's  Guide  to  Excellence,  by  William 
A.  Alcott,  Boston,  1840;  A  Daughter's  Own  Book,  or  Prac 
tical  Hints  from  a  Father  to  His  Daughter,  Philadelphia,  1836 ; 
The  Young  Lady's  Friend,  by  a  Lady,  Boston,  1836;  A  Prac 
tical  Directory  for  Young  Christian  Females,  by  Harvey 
Newcomb,  Boston,  1833;  Parental  Legacies,  Consisting  of 
Advice  from  a  Lady  of  Quality  to  Her  Children,  Boston,  1804; 
A  Mirror  for  the  Female  Sex,  by  Mrs.  Pilkington,  Hartford, 
1799. 

On  dress: 

Costumes  of  Colonial  Times,  by  Alice  Morse  Earle,  New 
York,  1894;  Two  Centuries  of  Costume  in  America,  by 
Alice  Morse  Earle,  New  York,  1903 ;  Modes  and  Manners 
of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  by  Max  von  Bohn,  New  York, 
1909;  Costume  of  British  Ladies  from  the  Time  of  William  I. 
to  the  Reign  of  Queen  Victoria,  London,  1840;  and  the 
contemporaneous  fashion-plates  and  illustrations  in  books. 

On  the  laboring-men: 

The  Labor  Problem,  by  William  E.  Barns,  New  York, 
1886;  The  Labor  Movement  in  America,  by  Richard  T.  Ely, 
New  York,  1890;  The  Labor  Movement,  by  George  Edwin 
McNeill,  New  York,  1887. 

On  the  theater  and  music: 

History  of  the  American  Theatre,  by  William  Dunlap, 
New  York,  1832;  Early  Concert  Life  in  America,  by  O.  G. 
Sonneck,  Leipzig,  1907;  The  Star-spangled  Banner,  America, 
Yankee  Doodle,  Hail  Columbia,  by  O.  G.  Sonneck,  Washing 
ton,  1909  (the  chapter  on  The  Star-spangled  Banner  issued 
separately  in  a  much  revised  and  enlarged  version  in  1914) ; 

283 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Plays  and  Players,  by  Laurence  Hutton,  New  York,  1875; 
The  Democratic  Songster,  Baltimore,  1794. 

On  literature : 

Salamagundi,  or  the  Whim-whams  and  Opinions  of 
Launcelot  Langstaff,  New  York,  1807;  Precaution  (James 
Fenimore  Cooper),  New  York,  1820;  Old-time  Schools  and 
School-books,  by  Clifton  Johnson,  New  York,  1904;  James 
Fenimore  Cooper,  by  Thomas  R.  Lounsbury,  Boston,  1883; 
Washington  Irving,  by  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  Boston, 
1882;  Modern  Chivalry,  by  Hugh  Henry  Brackenridge, 
Richmond,  1815;  Contributions  to  American  Educational 
History,  Vol.  I  (Herbert  B.  Adams),  Washington,  1889; 
by  Noah  Webster:  American  Selections  of  Lessons  in 
Reading  and  Speaking,  Philadelphia,  1787  Jand  later  editions; 
The  American  Spelling-book,  Containing  an  Easy  Standard  of 
Pronunciation,  1790  and  other  editions;  A  Collection  of 
Papers  on  Political,  Literary,  and  Moral  Subjects,  New  York, 
1843;  An  American  Dictionary  of  the  English  Language, 
1841  and  other  editions;  Dissertations  on  the  English  Lan 
guage,  1789;  The  Elementary  Primer,  1831;  A  Grammatical 
Institute  of  the  English  Language,  Hartford,  1784;  The 
Columbiad,  by  Joel  Barlow,  London,  1809;  An  Elegy  on 
Titus  Hosmer,  by  Joel  Barlow,  Hartford  (no  date);  Noah 
Webster,  by  Emily  Ellsworth  Fowler  Ford  and  Emily  Ells 
worth  Ford  Skeil,  New  York,  1912  (privately  printed); 
Four  Southern  Magazines,  by  Edward  Reinhold  Ropes, 
Richmond,  1902;  The  Southern  Literary  Messenger,  by 
Benjamin  Blake  Minor,  Washington,  1905. 

On  food  and  cookery: 

Miss  Beecher's  Domestic  Receipt  Book,  New  York,  1846; 
The  Frugal  Housewife,  or  Complete  Woman  Cook,  by  Susan 
nah  Carter,  New  York,  1803;  The  Art  of  Cookery  made 
Plain  and  Easy,  by  Mrs.  Glasse,  Alexandria,  1805;  The 
Art  of  Invigorating  and  Prolonging  Life,  by  the  author  of 
the  Cook's  Oracle,  Philadelphia,  1823;  Apician  Morsels, 
by  Dick  Humbugius  Secundus,  New  York,  1829;  The 
Young  Housekeeper,  or  Thoughts  on  Food  and  Cookery,  by 
William  A.  Alcott,  Boston,  1838;  Old  Cookery  Books  and 

284 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Ancient  Cuisine,  by  W.  Carew-Hazlitt,  New  York,  1886; 
The  Housekeeper's  Book,  by  a  Lady,  Philadelphia,  1837; 
Physiologie  du  Gout,  by  Brillat-Savarin,  Paris;  A  History 
of  the  Oyster,  by  T.  C.  Eyton,  London,  1858;  Investigations 
on  the  Nutrition  of  Man  in  the  United  States,  by  C.  F. 
Langworthy  and  R.  D.  Milner,  Washington,  1904;  The 
House  Servant's  Directory,  by  Robert  Roberts,  Boston,  1828; 
The  Cook's  Own  Book,  by  a  Boston  Housekeeper,  Boston, 
1837;  A  New  System  of  Domestic  Cookery,  by  a  Lady,  New 
York,  1817;  The  Kentucky  Housewife,  by  Mrs.  Lettice 
Bryan,  Cincinnati,  1841;  The  Experienced  American 
Housekeeper,  Hartford,  1833 ;  A  Short  Treatise  on  the  Habits 
and  Character  of  the  Oyster,  by  John  Gardener,  Opener 
General  at  Le  Count's  United  States  Refectory,  corner 
Fifth  and  Chestnut  Streets,  Philadelphia,  1837;  The  In 
fluence  of  Atmosphere  on  Human  Health,  by  Robley  Dun- 
glison,  M.D.,  Philadelphia,  1835;  "Ancient  American 
Bread,"  article  by  Henry  Chapman  Mercer,  1894  (reprint); 
The  Food  of  Certain  American  Indians,  by  Lucien  Carr, 
Worcester,  1895  (American  Antiquarian  Society's  Pro 
ceedings);  The  New  Mirror  for  Travellers,  by  an  Amateur 
(James  Kirke  Paulding),  New  York,  1828. 

On  communities: 

Plan  for  a  Free  Community  upon  the  Coast  of  Africa, 
London,  1789;  History  of  American  Socialisms,  by  John 
Humphrey  Noyes,  Philadelphia,  1870;  American  Com 
munities,  by  William  Alfred  Hinds,  Oneida,  1878;  'Second 
Edition,  Chicago,  1908;  History  of  the  Zoar  Society,  by 
E.  O.  Randall,  Columbus,  1900;  The  Harmony  Society, 
by  John  Archibald  Bole,  Ph.D.,  Philadelphia,  1904;  The 
Communistic  Societies  of  the  United  States,  by  Charles 
Nordhoff,  New  York,  1875;  History  of  the  Great  Ameri 
can  Fortunes,  by  Gustavus  Myers,  Vol.  I,  Chicago,  1910; 
Industrial  History  of  the  United  States,  by  Katharine  Aman, 
Ph.D.,  New  York,  1910;  The  Economic  History  of  the 
United  States,  by  Ernest  Ludlow  Bogart,  Ph.D.,  New  York, 
1912;  Commercial  Directory,  Philadelphia,  1823;  Robert 
Owen,>  by  Frank  Podmore,  London,  1906;  An  Essay  on 

285 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

Commonwealths,  New  York,  1822  (containing  the  constitu 
tion  of  the  New  York  Society  for  Promoting  Communities). 

On  sport,  crimes,  and  vices: 

The  South  Carolina  Jockey  Club,  by  John  B.  Irving, 
Charleston,  1857;  Game  Fowls,  by  J.  W.  Cooper,  Media, 
Pa.,  1859;  The  Game  Fowl,  Its  Origin  and  History,  by  R.  A. 
Mclntyre,  1906;  History  of  the  Temperance  Reformation,  by 
Lebbens  Armstrong,  New  York,  1853  *•  ^  Voice  from  the 
Washingtonian  Home,  by  David  Harrison,  Jr.,  Boston, 
1860;  History  of  the  First  Inebriate  Asylum,  by  its  Founder 
(J.  Edward  Turner),  New  York,  1888;  Political  Truth 
(Gaming  Laws  in  Virginia),  by  Virginius,  Richmond  (no 
date);  Memoirs  of  Robert  Bailey,  Richmond,  1822;  The 
Trail  of  Blood,  Record  of  Crime,  New  York,  1860;  United 
States  Criminal  History,  by  P.  R.  Hamblin,  Fayetteville, 
New  York,  1836 ;  Lives  of  the  Felons,  New  York,  1846 ;  Lynch 
Law,  by  James  Elbert  Cutler,  New  York,  1905;  The  Record 
of  Crimes  in  the  United  States,  Buffalo,  1833;  Murder  in 
All  Ages,  by  Matthew  Worth  Pinkerton,  Chicago,  1898; 
The  Exposition,  Remonstrance,  and  Protest  of  Don  Vincente 
Pazos,  Philadelphia,  1818;  Pirates'  Own  Book,  Philadelphia, 
1841;  Narrative  of  a  Voyage  to  the  Spanish  Main  in  the 
Ship  "  Two  Friends,"  London,  1819 ;  The  Sabbath  in  Puritan 
New  England,  by  Alice  Morse  Earle,  New  York,  1891; 
Sunday  Legislation,  by  Abram  Herbert  Lewis,  New  York, 
1902;  Proceedings  of  the  Middlesex  Convention,  Andover, 
1814*  Sunday  Laws,  by  George  E.  Harris,  Rochester,  1892; 
American  State  Papers  bearing  on  Sunday  Legislation, 
William  Addison  Blakely,  editor,  New  York  and  Washing 
ton,  1890;  The  American  Turf,  New  York,  1898. 

On  charitable  institutions,  hospitals,  asylums,  poor- 
houses,  prisons: 

Report  of  Secretary  of  State  of  New  York,  Returns  of 
County  Superintendents  of  the  Poor,  Albany,  1833;  Report 
of  Delegate  from  Benevolent  Societies  of  Boston,  Boston,  1834; 
Report  of  the  Examination  of  Poor-houses,  Jails,  &c.,  in  the 
State  of  New  York,  by  Samuel  Chipman,  Albany,  1835; 
Statement  of  the  Provision  for  the  Poor,  by  Nessau  W. 

286 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Senior,  London,  1835;  Remarks  on  Prisons  and  Prison 
Discipline,  from  the  Christian  Examiner,  Bostgfa,  1826; 
Directory  of  the  Washington  Benevolent  Society,  Boston,  1813 ; 
Charities  in  the  District  of  Columbia  (Part  III,  ^Historical), 
Washington,  1898;  History  of  Poor  Relief  Legislation  in 
Pennsylvania,  by  William  Clinton  Heffner,  pleona,  Pa., 
1913 ;  Private  Charitable  Institutions  of  the  Cityfof  New  York, 
New  York,  1904;  Report  of  William  Crawford  on  the  Peni 
tentiaries  of  the  United  States,  1834  (Parliamentary  Report) ; 
Penal  and  Charitable  Institutions  of  Pennsylvania,  Harris- 
burg,  1897 ;  Thoughts  on  Penitentiaries  and  Prison  Discipline, 
by  Mathew  Carey,  Philadelphia,  1831;  The  Philanthropist, 
by  a  Pennsylvanian,  Philadelphia,  1813;  Report  on  the 
Penitentiary  System  in  the  United  States,  New  York,  1822; 
Remarks  on  Prisons  and  Prison  Discipline  in  the  United 
States,  by  D.  L.  Dix,  Philadelphia,  1845;  Penal  and  Re 
formatory  Institutions  (Russell  Sage  Foundation),  Charles 
Richmond  Henderson,  editor,  New  York,  1910;  Hospitals, 
Their  History,  Organization,  and  Construction,  by  W.  Gill 
Wylie,  New  York,  1877;  The  Charities  of  New  York,  by 
Henry  J.  Cammann  and  Hugh  N.  Camp,  New  York,  1868; 
American  Charities,  by  Amos  G.  Warner,  New  York,  1894 
and  1908 ;  History  of  Philadelphia  Almshouses  and  Hospitals, 
by  Charles  Lawrence,  Philadelphia,  1905;  Appeal  to  the 
Wealthy  of  the  Land,  by  Mathew  Carey,  Philadelphia, 
I833;  The  Overseers  of  the  Poor  of  the  City  of  Boston  to 
Their  Constituents,  Boston,  1822;  An  Account  of  Bettevue 
Hospital,  Robert  J.  Carlisle,  editor,  New  York,  1893;  Ac 
count  of  the  Friends  Asylum,  Philadelphia,  1814;  Memorial 
Soliciting  a  State  Hospital  for  the  Insane,  submitted  to 
the  legislature  of  Pennsylvania  by  Dorothea  Lynde  Dix, 
Philadelphia,  1845;  History  of  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital, 
by  Thomas  G.  Morton  and  Frank  Woodbury,  Philadel 
phia,  1895. 

Miscellaneous: 

Bioren's  Pennsylvania  Pocket  Remembrancer,  Philadel 
phia,  1816;  American  Almanac,  Germantown,  1816;  The 
Farmer's  Almanac,  Boston,  1831 ;  The  New  Haven  Almanac, 

287 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 

New  Haven,  1825;  The  Vermont  Register  and  Almanac, 
Burlington,  1818;  Hagerstown  Town  and  Country  Almanac, 
Hagerstown,  1836;  Sam  Slick  of  Slickville,  by  Thomas  C. 
Haliburton,  New  York,  1878;  Old  Town  Folks,  by  Mrs. 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe,  Boston,  1869;  History  of  Yellow 
Fever,  by  George  Augustin,  New  Orleans,  1909;  Century  of 
American  Medicine,  New  York,  1876;  A  Treatise  on  Febrile 
Diseases,  by  A.  P.  Wilson,  Philadelphia,  1816;  Introduc 
tory  Discourse,  by  David  Hosack,  New  York,  1813; 
Lectures,  by  David  Hosack,  Philadelphia,  1838;  Essays 
on  Various  Subjects  of  Medical  Science,  by  David  Hosack, 
New  York,  1824;  The  American  Rush -Light,  by  Peter 
Porcupine  (William  Cobbett),  London,  1800;  Old  Family 
Letters  Copied  for  Edward  Biddle,  Philadelphia,  1892.  The 
following  by  Benjamin  Rush:  An  Account  of  the  Causes 
of  Longevity,  Philadelphia,  1793;  Essays,  Philadelphia, 
1806;  An  Enquiry  into  the  Effects  of  Ardent  Spirits  upon 
the  Human  Body  and  Mind,  New  York,  1811;  Medical 
Enquiries  and  Observations,  Philadelphia,  1805;  Observa 
tions  on  the  Origin  of  Malignant,  Bilious  or  Yellow  Fever 
in  Philadelphia,  Philadelphia,  1799. 


INDEX 


Actors  and  audiences,  88-89. 

Adams,  John,  surviving  signer,  8; 
on  titles,  58;  candidate  for 
presidency,  74;  appoints  day 
of  fasting,  115;  diminished  the 
powe  r  of  the  presidency, 
260. 

Adams,  Mrs.  John,  60. 

Adultery,  punishments  for, 
84. 

Albany,  travel  to,  51. 

Alien  and  Sedition  Laws,  252. 

Allen,  Lieut.  William  H.,  U.S.N., 
161. 

Allstpn,  Washington,  portrait- 
painter,  85. 

Amelia  Island,  headquarters  for 
slave-smugglers,  164. 

American  Academy  of  Fine  Arts, 
organized,  85. 

American  Colonization  Society, 
236-238. 

American  Whig  Society,  261. 

Analectic,  The,  146. 

Annapolis,  society  in,  71. 

Anti-rent  war,  231. 

Appleton,  James,  report  on  tem 
perance  to  Maine  legislature, 

174-    . 

Apprentice  system,  100. 

Armstrong,  John,  Secretary  of 
War,  9. 

Art  in  America,  85. 

Ashe,  Thomas,  writings  on  Ameri 
ca,  28. 

Astor,  John  Jacob,  230. 

Augusta,  mail  route  to,  52. 

Aury,  Louis  de,  Governor  of 
Texas,  163-164. 


B 


Bache,  Miss,  granddaughter  of 
Franklin,  89. 

Bailey,  "Major"  Robert,  gam 
bler,  182. 

Baker,  Anthony  St.  John,  I. 

Baltimore,  population,  22;  iron 
works,  24;  appearance  of,  30; 
society  in,  71;  French  opera 
in,  97;  "  Washingtonian  move 
ment"  in,  174;  yellow-fever 
epidemics,  208. 

Banking,  231. 

Baptists,  disapproval  of  theater, 
86;  popularity  of,  121. 

Barbour,  Senator  James,  45. 

Barker,  James  N.,  playwright,  92. 

Barlow,  Joel,  of  Connecticut,  114; 
author  of  "The  Columbiad," 
142-143. 

Beaujour,  Felix  de,  opinion  of 
America,  30. 

Bell  Tavern,  Richmond,  52. 

Bellevue  Hospital,  New  York,  197. 

Benton,  Senator  Thomas  H.,  257. 

Bigelow,  Dr.  Jacob,  205. 

Billings,  William,  composer,  96. 

Bingham,  William,  richest  man  in 
America,  2 30;  enters  Senate,  2 57. 

Bladensburg,  defeat  at,  4. 

Bladensburg  Races,  The,  268. 

Blasphemy,  laws  against,  186. 

Books  in  farm-houses,  104-105. 

Boston,  population,  22;  glass 
works,  24;  appearance  of,  30; 
stage  at,  51;  society  of,  69-70; 
theaters,  87,  90;  music  in,  96; 
benevolent  associations,  196- 
197. 

Brashear,  Dr.  Walter,  213. 


289 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 


Bridgetown,  stage  line  at,  49. 
Existed,    John,    author   of    "The 

Resources  of  the  U.  S.,"  25. 
Brooklyn,  ferry  to,  50. 
Brown,    Charles    Brockden,   first 

American  novelist,  147. 
Brown   University,   founding   of, 

128. 
Brunswick,  steamboat  line  to,  51. 


Caldwell,  James  H.,  erected  thea 
ters,  87. 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  age,  10;  on 
slavery,  39;  a  slaveholder,  43, 
45;  candidate  for  presidency, 
74;  in  Senate,  257. 

Campbell,  George  W.,  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  9;  a  slave 
holder,  43. 

Candler,  Isaac,  opinion  of  Ameri 
ca,  29. 

Card-playing,  181-182. 

Carey,   fcMathew,    reformer,   191, 

„  I94V, 

Carr,  Benjamin,  musician,  97. 

Carrea  da  Serra,  Abbe",  Portu 
guese  minister,  64. 

Carroll,  Charles,  of  Carrollton, 
signer,  8;  on  titles,  58-59;  in 
Senate,  256. 

Carroll,  Henry,  brought  copy  of 
Peace  Treaty  to  Washington, 
1-4. 

Carroll,  John,  Bishop,  122,  146. 

Cartage,  prices  for,  99-100. 

Charity,  106. 

Charleston,  population,  22;  ap 
pearance  of,  30;  characteristics 
of  people,  36;  society  in,  71-72; 
St.  Cecelia  Society  organized, 
96;  Jews  in,  123;  Washington 
race-course  near,  177-178;  yel 
low  fever  in,  208. 

Chase,  Samuel,  Federalist  parti 
san,  254. 

Cheves,  Langdon,  age,  10;  a  slave 
holder,  43-45. 

Chickasaw  Indians,  21. 

Chippewa  Indians,  21. 

Choctaw  Indians,  21. 


Church,  attendance  obligatory, 
98. 

Cincinnati,  Society  of  the,  273. 

Cities  in  America,  population,  22. 

City  Hall  in  New  York,  69. 

City  Hotel,  Philadelphia,  stage 
at,  50. 

Clay,  Henry,  Speaker  of  House, 
10;  on  slavery,  42-43;  slave 
holder,  45;  in  Senate,  257. 

Clinton,  Governor  George,  92; 
pardons  Ann  Lee,  240. 

Clothes,  61-63. 

Gobbet,  William,  "Peter  Porcu 
pine,"  210. 

Cock-fighting,  180. 

Coles,  Miss  Sally,  7. 

Colleges,  55. 

Columbia,  S.  C.,  mail  route  to, 
52. 

Columbian  Telescope  and  Literary 
Compiler,  144-145. 

Commerce,  state  of,  25-26. 

Concerts,  96. 

Congregational  Church,  122-123. 

Connecticut,  political  tranquillity 
in,  37;  divorce  in,  84;  laws 
against  theaters  in,  87;  state 
support  for  religion,  117;  Shak 
ers  in,  239. 

Cooke,  George  Frederick,  actor, 
89. 

Cookery,  215-222. 

Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  novels 
of,  148. 

Cooper,  Thomas  Abthorpe,  actor, 
89. 

Craik,  Dr.,  Washington's  physi 
cian,  202. 

Crawford,  William  H.,  member  of 
the  Cabinet,  9;  a  slaveholder, 
43;  candidate  for  presidency, 
74;  Secretary,  of  Treasury,  270- 
271. 

Creek  Indians,  21. 

Crimes  and  punishments,  157- 
160. 

Crowninshield,  Benjamin  W.,  Sec 
retary  of  the  Navy,  9,  270. 

Cullen,  Dr.  William,  206. 

Currie,  Dr.  William,  210. 

Custus,  Elizabeth  Parke,  83. 


290 


INDEX 


Dallas,  Alexander  H.,  Secretary 
of  the  Treasury,  9. 

Dallas,  George  M.,  U.  S.  Attorney 
at  Philadelphia,  166. 

Darley,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  actors,  89. 

Dartmouth  College  founded,  128. 

Deaf  and  dumb,  schools  for,  199. 

Debts  and  debtors,  169-170. 

Declaration  of  Independence, 
signers  of,  8. 

Delaware  Indians,  21. 

Delaware,  slaves  in,  21,  39;  di 
vorce  in,  83;  religious  freedom 
in,  118;  legal  punishments  in, 
I59't  opposed  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  Resolutions,  255. 

Detroit,  surrender  at,  4. 

Dickinson,  Charles,  154. 

District  of  Columbia,  21. 

Divinity  schools,  129-130. 

Divorce  in  U.  S.,  83. 

Doctors,  1 06;  and  medical  treat 
ment,  201-214. 

Dow,  Neal,  law  of,  174. 

Dress,  of  women,  61 ;  of  men,  63. 

Drinking,  32,  104,  171-175,  225- 
227. 

Dueling,  154,  157. 

Dunlap,  William,  playwright,  92. 

Dutch  in  the  U.  S.,  19-20,  32,  38. 


Education,  124-138. 

Elizabethtown,  stage  to,  50. 

Ellery,  William,  signer,  8. 

Ellsworth,  Oliver,  Senator,  250- 
251,  256;  Chief  Justice,  254. 

Emerson,  Rev.  Joseph,  girls' 
seminary  of,  134. 

England,  American  interest  in 
and  sympathy  with,  10-12. 

England,  peace  with  United  States, 
4-5- 

English  in  America,  32. 

Entertainments  and  sports  on 
farms,  103-104. 

Episcopal  Church  lost  state  sup 
port,  119;  new  energy  of,  121- 

122. 


Episcopalians  and  the  theater,  86. 

Eppes,  Mrs.,  60. 

Eustis,  William,  Secretary  of  War, 

9- 

Eye,  The,  published  at  Philadel 
phia,  144. 

F 

Factories  and  mills,  98-99. 
Farm  life,  103-104. 
Federal  Street  Theater,  Boston,  87. 
Federalists,   the,  and    Treaty    of 

Ghent,  6. 

Female  Friend,  The,  175. 
Fitch,  John,  steamboat  of,  56. 
Floridas,  16-17. 
Floyd,  William,  signer,  8. 
Food,  216-223. 
Foreign    opinion    of    the    United 

States,  27-33. 
France,     American     interest     in, 

11-12. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  urges  higher 
education,  124;  on  the  folly  of 
drinking,  173;  investigated  Mes- 
mer,  214;  on  patriotism,  273. 

Franklin  House,  Washington,  52. 

French  in  the  United  States,  19- 
20. 

Fulton,  Robert,  steamboat  of,  56. 


Gaillard,  John,  slaveholder,  43. 

Gallatin,  Albert,  Secretary  of 
Treasury,  9. 

Gallaudet,  Thomas  H.,  199. 

Galveston  Island,  163-164. 

Gambling,  175-183. 

Gaston,  William,  of  North  Caro 
lina,  45. 

Gehot,  Joseph,  musician,  97. 

Gene~t,  Citizen,  92. 

Georgetown  College,  opening  of, 
128. 

Georgetown,  Semmes  Tavern  at, 
52;  society  in,  65. 

Georgia,  value  of  land  in,  23; 
characteristics  of  people,  36; 
divorce  in,  83;  religious  free 
dom  in,  118;  Methodists  in, 
121 ;  criminal  code  of,  158. 


291 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 


Germans  in  the  United  States,  19, 

38. 

Gerry,    Elbridge,    Vice-President, 

8. 
Ghent,  Treaty  of,  news  brought  to 

America,  1-7. 
Gibbs,  Charles,  pirate,  161. 
Gilman,     Nicholas,     member     of 

Congress,  8. 

Girard,  Stephen,  wealth  of,  230. 
Girls'  schools,  133-134. 
Gould,  Judge  James,  131. 
Government,  248-258. 
Gram,  Dr.,  214. 

Graupner,  Gottlieb,  musician,  97. 
"Great  Revival,  The,"  120. 
"Grecian   Daughter,   The,"   gala 

performance     in     New     York, 

92-93. 

Greenwood,  John,  dentist,  212. 

Griswold,  Roger,  on  Louisiana,  15. 

Grundy,  Felix,  age,  10;  slave 
holder,  43,  45. 

Grymes,  John  R.,  United  States 
Attorney  at  New  Orleans,  162. 

H 

Hahnemanism,  214. 

Hallam,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  actors,  89. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,   114;    duel 

with    Burr,    155;     dines    with 

Jefferson,  224;  Madison's  break 

with,  264. 
Hammond,  John  H.,  Senator  from 

South  Carolina,  71. 
Harmony  Society,  242-243. 
Harrison,  Gen.  William  H.,  226. 
Hartford,  theater  in,  87;    school 

for  deaf  and  dumb,  199. 
Hartford  Convention,  253. 
Harvard,  John,  127. 
Harvard  College,  127,  129. 
Harwood,  John  E.,  actor,  89. 
Hayne,  Robert  J.,  Senator,  257. 
Henry,  John,  Senator,  257. 
Hewitt,  James,  conductor  of  New 

York  orchestra,  89,  97. 
High  schools,  133. 
Highwaymen,  166. 
Hodgkinson,  Mr.  and  Mrs.,  actors, 

89. 


Holden,  Oliver,  composer,  96. 
Holman,    Joseph    George,    actor, 

89. 
Hopkins,  Samuel,  of  Rhode  Island, 

234- 

Hopkinson,  Francis,  composer,  96. 
Hopkinson,  Joseph,  composer  of 

"Hail  Columbia,"  94. 
Hosack,  Dr.  David,  203,  207,  213. 
Horse-boat,  ferry,  50. 
Humor,  early  American,  107-113. 
Hyer,  Jacob,  prize-fighter,  181. 


Illinois,  admission  to  Union,  17; 
population  of,  21. 

Immigrants,  101. 

Indian,  population,  21;  music, 
95;  religion,  123. 

Indian  Queen  Hotel  in  Washing 
ton,  52. 

Indian  Territory,  20. 

Indiana,  admission  to  Union,  17; 
population,  21. 

Indiana,  Shaker  communities  in, 
240. 

Ingalls,  Dr.  John,  213. 

Ingersoll,  Jared,  influence  of,  9. 

Insane,  treatment  of,   198-199. 

Irish  in  the  United  States,  19-20, 

IOI-IO2. 

Irving,  Washington,  145;  reputa 
tion  of,  148 ;  makes  fun  of  Madi 
son,  268. 

Irving,  William,  145. 

J 

Jackson,  Andrew,  4;  unknown  to 
Europeans,  27;  and  Washington 
society,  67,  74;  popular  hero, 
124-125;  duels  of,  154-155; 
aided  by  the  Lafittes,  163;  fought 
Bank  of  the  United  States,  231 ; 
proclaims  disunion  treason,  252. 

Jay,  John,  advocates  emancipa 
tion  of  slaves,  234;  confirma 
tion  opposed,  251. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  signer,  8;  in 
White  House,  60;  interest  in 
education,  127;  promotes  vac- 


292 


INDEX 


cination,  208;  gives  dinner  to 
Alexander  Hamilton,  223;  op 
position  to  large  governmental 
powers,  260;  friend  of  Madi 
son,  266. 

Jews,  small  number  of,  in  United 
States,  123. 

Jones,  William,  Secretary  of  the 
Navy,  9. 

Joor,  William,  playwright,  92. 

Journal  of  the  Times,  The,  pub 
lished  at  Baltimore,  144. 


K 


Kentucky,  admission  to  Union, 
17;  population,  20;  slaves,  21; 
characteristics  of  people,  38; 
divorce  in,  83;  religious  free 
dom  in,  118;  Methodists  in, 
121 ;  Shakers  in,  239. 

Key,  Francis  Scott,  composer  of 
"Star-spangled  Banner,"  94. 

King,  Rufus,  Senator,  8-9,  250- 
251,  256. 

King's  Chapel  in  Boston,  96. 

King's  College  (Columbia  Uni 
versity)  founded,  128. 

Kissam,  Dr.  Richard  S.,  212. 


Labor,  conditions  of,  98-103. 

Lafitte,  Jean,  Pierre,  and  Do 
minique,  outlaws,  162. 

Land,  value  of,  23. 

Languages  used,  20. 

Latrobe,  Benjamin  H.f  furnishes 
White  House,;j6o. 

Law,  Andrew,  composer,  96. 

Law-schools,  130-131. 

Law,  Thomas,  married  Elizabeth 
Custis,  83. 

Lear,  Tobias,  201. 

Lee,  Ann,  founder  of  Shakers,  239. 

Lee,  Richard  Henry,  Senator,  256. 

Literary  Magazine,  The,  146. 

Literary  taste,  146-147. 

Livingston,  Edward,  writer  on 
prison  reform,  191,  193;  on 
poor  relief,  195. 

Livingston,  Elizabeth  Stevens,  76. 


Livingston,  Robert  R.,  of  Cler- 
mont,  76. 

Local  jealousies  and  misunder 
standings,  34. 

Louisiana,  British  evacuation  of, 
3;  objections  to  acquiring,  15; 
admission,  17,  252;  French 
population  of,  19-20,  36;  di 
vorce  laws  in,  83;  religious  free 
dom  in,  118;  criminal  code  of, 

159,  J93- 

Lowndes,  Caleb,  Quaker  writer, 
191. 

Lowndes,  William,  10;  slave 
holder,  43-45- 

Lowndes,  Mrs.,  45. 


M 


McDonough,  Commodore,  toast 
to,  225. 

McDowell,  Dr.  Ephraim,  204,  212. 

Macaulay  on  parties,  n. 

MacGregor,  Gregor,  freebooter, 
163-164. 

Mackenzie's  opinions  of  Ameri 
cans,  32. 

Maclay,  William,  on  titles,  58. 

Macon,  Nathaniel,  of  North  Caro 
lina,  45. 

Madison,  James,  receives  treaty, 
3,  7;  retirement  from  office,  9; 
slaveholder,  43;  praised  Por 
tuguese  minister,  64;  inaugural 
suit  of,  76;  issues  proclamation 
of  thanks,  115;  offers  amend 
ment  to  Virginia  Bill  of  Rights, 
116;  owned  interest  in  a  race 
horse,  177;  Washington's  criti 
cism  of,  201;  listened  to  pro 
posal  to  dissolve  the  Union,  251 ; 
preserved  balance  of  power,  260 ; 
long  public  service,  261-262; 
scholarship,  263;  break  with 
Hamilton,  264;  Clay's  opinion 
of,  265;  hatred  of  war,  266; 
appearance  of,  267;  private  life, 
269. 

Madison,  Mrs.  Dolly,  receives 
news  of  peace,  7-8;  head  of 
society,  60;  clothes  described, 
61;  exerted  no  political  in- 


293 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 


fluence,  75;  organizes  orphan 
asylum,  197;  at  Monticello, 
221 ;  appearance  of,  268-269. 

Madison  Hotel  in  Philadelphia. 
68. 

Maine,  admission  to  Union,  17; 
Shakers  in,  239. 

Mansion  House,  Philadelphia,  50. 

Manufacturing,  state  of,  24. 

Marshall,  Chief  Justice,  45,  255- 
256. 

Maryland,  population  of,  20-21; 
characteristics  of  planters,  35; 
divorce  in,  83;  Declaration  of 
Rights,  117;  criminal  code  in, 
159- 

Mason,  Armistead  T.,  killed  in 
duel,  154. 

Mason,  George,  on  slavery,  39, 
42,  44. 

Massachusetts,  population,  20-21; 
abolished  slavery,  39;  theaters 
in,  87;  wages  in,  100;  and  re 
ligious  worship,  117;  insane 
asylum,  199;  Shakers  in,  239; 
Federalists  threaten  disunion, 
252. 

Medical  schools,  130,  211. 

Merry,  Mrs.,  actress,  89. 

Methodist  Church  disapproval  of 
theater,  86;  affected  by  Revo 
lution,  119;  traveling  preachers, 
12 1 ;  abstinence  crusade  of,  174. 

Michigan,  admission  to  Union, 
17;  population,  21;  Military 
academy  at  West  Point,  131. 

Mississippi,  admission  to  Union, 

17- 

Missouri,  admission  to  Union,  17; 
population,  21. 

Mobile,  mail  route  to,  52. 

Mongaret's  opinion  of  Ameri 
cans,  31. 

Monroe,  James,  receives  Treaty 
of  Ghent,  3-4;  Secretary  of 
State,  10;  slaveholder,  43,  45; 
influence  of  women  in  adminis 
tration  of,  74;  in  Senate,  256. 

Monthly  Magazine,  The,  146. 

Montule's  opinion  of  Americans, 
32. 

More,  Hannah,  78-79,  81. 


Morris,  [Gouverneur,  old  age  of, 

9- 

Morris,  Robert,  in  Senate,  256. 
Mott,  Dr.  Valentine,  213. 
Music,  American,  94,  97. 


N 


National  lands,  229. 

Naval  Academy,  131. 

Negroes,  music  of,  95;  humor  of, 
111-113;  religion  of,  123. 

New  Hampshire,  population  of, 
20;  religious  worship,  117; 
crime  in,  158;  punishments  in, 
167;  Shakers  in,  239. 

New  Haven,  route  to,  51. 

New  Jersey,  population,  19-21; 
characteristics  of  people,  38; 
abolished  slavery,  39;  religious 
profession  and  office  tenure, 
118. 

New  Orleans,  battle  of,  celebra 
tion,  3;  population,  22;  ap 
pearance  of,  30;  stage  to,  52; 
society  in,  71;  French  actors 
in,  86;  opera  in,  97;  Jews  in, 
123;  cock-fights  in,  180;  yel 
low-fever  epidemics,  208-209. 

Newport,  Jews  in,  123. 

Newspapers,    149-152. 

New  York,  population,  19-21; 
value  of  land,  23;  manners  of 
people,  38;  divorce  law,  83; 
religious  freedom  in,  1 18;  Meth 
odists  in,  12 1 ;  doctors  of,  204- 
205;  Shakers  in,  239;  objected 
to  Virginia  Resolutions,  245. 

New  York  City,  population,  22; 
appearance  of,  30;  social  life 
of,  38,  69;  stage  line,  49;  op 
position  to  playhouses,  88;  or 
chestra  in,  89;  theater,  90; 
Jewish  population,  123;  prison 
system  in,  192;  almshouse  in, 
196;  Orphan  Asylum  Society 
organized,  196-197;  care  for 
the  insane,  198-199;  schools 
for  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind,  199; 
yellow  fever  in,  208. 

New  York  Society  for  Promoting 
Communities,  245. 


294 


INDEX 


Noah,  Mordecai  M.,  journalist  and 
playwright,  92. 

Norfolk,  appearance  of,  30;  yel 
low  fever  in,  208. 

North  American  Review,  146. 

North  Carolina,  population  of,  20; 
value  of  land  in,  23;  character 
istics  of,  35-37;  early  marriages 
in,  77;  excluded  non-Christians 
from  office,  118;  Methodists  in, 
12 1 ;  legal  punishments  in,  159; 
discusses  disunion,  252. 

Norwich  University,  132. 


"Octagon  House"  in  Washing 
ton,  4. 

Ohio,  17;  admission  to  Union,  17; 
population,  20 ;  characteristics 
of  people,  38 ;  Shakers  in,  239. 

Oldmixon,  Mrs.,  actress,  89. 

O'Neil's  Tavern,  Washington,  52. 

Opera,  97. 

Orchestra,  89. 

Outlaws,   165. 

Owen,  Robert,  245-246. 


Paine,  Robert  Treat,  signer,  87. 

Paine,  Thomas,  American  writer, 
87. 

Paine,  Tom,  English  writer,  in 
fluence  of  writings  in  United 
States,  118-119. 

Panama  Canal  proposed,  25. 

Parkinson's  writings  on  America, 
28. 

Parties,  origin,  n. 

Partridge,  Capt.  Alden,  academy 
of,  132-133- 

Paterson,  Wm.,  in  Senate,  256. 

Patriotism,  273-279. 

Patterson,  Commander  Daniel  T., 
U.S.N.,  162. 

Paulding,   James    Kirke,   author, 

145- 

Peace,  news  of,  2. 
Peales,  the,  port  rait -painters,  85. 
Penn,  William,   does  away   with 
death -penalty,  189. 


Pennsylvania,  population,  19-20; 
manufactories,  24;  character 
istics  of  people,  38;  abolished 
slavery,  39;  labor  in,  101; 
denies  rights  to  atheists,  118; 
poor-law  of,  195-196;  hospital 
for  the  insane,  198;  other  hos 
pitals,  200 

Pennsylvania  Academy  of  Fine 
Arts,  organized,  85. 

Pennsylvania,  University  of,  129. 

Periodicals,   144-146. 

Perth  Amboy,  steamboat  line  to, 

51- 

Philadelphia,  population  of,  22; 
appearance,  30;  trade,  38; 
stage  line,  49;  society,  68;  or 
chestra  and  theater,  89-90; 
Jews  in,  123;  first  almshouse, 
196;  Female  Charitable  Society, 
197;  doctors,  203;  yellow  fever 
in,  208-209. 

Phile,  Philip,  composer,  94. 

Physick,  Dr.  Philip  S.,  203,  213. 

Piano-makers,  96. 

Pickering,  Timothy,  of  Massa 
chusetts,  8. 

Pinckney,   Charles,  influencej  of, 

9- 

Pinkney,  William,  Attorney-Gen 
eral,  9. 

Piracy  and  pirates,  160-165. 
Pise,    Charles    C.,    chaplain    of 

Seriate,  115. 
Placide,  actor-manager's  benefit, 

90-91. 
Population  of  United  States,  19; 

of  different  states,  20. 
Porter,  Commodore  David,  161. 
Portfolio,  The,  146. 
Postage,  cost  of,  54. 
Post-roads,  52. 
Poverty   and   methods   of   relief, 

194-200. 
Presbyterians,    disapprobation   of 

the    theater,    86;     growth    of 

church,  122. 
President,  the,  259,  272. 
Prices  of  food,  IOI-JO2. 
Princeton  College,   55. 
Princeton  University,   128-129. 
Prisons,  188-193. 


295 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 


Prize-fights,  181. 
Providence,  population,  22. 


Quakers,  avoidance  of  theaters, 
86. 

Quincy,  Josiah,  threatened  dis 
union,  252. 


Racing,  175-180. 

Raleigh,  society  in,  71. 

Ramsey,  David,  on  slavery,  42. 

Randolph,  Mrs.,  60. 

Randolph-Macon  College,  128. 

Rapp,  George,  founder  of  Har 
mony  Society,  242-243,  245. 

Read,  George,  in  Senate,  256. 

Reinagle,  Alexander,  conductor  of 
Philadelphia  orchestra,  89,  97. 

Religion,   114-123. 

Religious  denominations  in  differ 
ent  states,  123. 

Rhode  Island,  value  of  land  in,  23 ; 
restricts  religious  freedom,  118. 

Richmond,  stage  at,  51;  Bell 
Tavern  in,  52;  theaters  in,  86- 
87;  taste  for  foreign  plays,  92. 

Roads,  condition  of,  52. 

Robbinstown,  stage,  52. 

Roman  Catholics,  increase  of,  in 
United  States,  and  the  theater, 
86; 122. 

Rush,  Dr.  Benjamin,  most  in 
fluential  physician  of  the  coun 
try,  202-207,  210. 

Rush,  Richard,  Attorney-General, 
9,  270;  Comptroller  of  the 
Treasury,  268. 

Rush,  William,  sculptor,  85. 


Sabbath-breaking,  183-186. 
Salem,  population  of,  22. 
Salmagundi,  145. 
Savannah,    society  in,    71 ;     Jews 

in,  123;   yellow  fever  in,  208. 
Savarin,  Anthelme  Brillat,  French 


exile,  219-220. 


School-books,  137-138.' 

Scotch  in  the  United  States,  19. 

Sea  travel,  routes,  54. 

Sectionalism,  46,  48. 

Semmes's  Tavern,  Georgetown, 
52. 

Separation  of  church  and  state, 
115-116. 

Separatists,  the,  244. 

Servants,  102. 

Shakers,  239-242. 

Shawanee  Indians,  21. 

Shining  Mountains,  16,  18. 

Shippen,  Dr.  William,  213. 

Shipping,  230. 

Singers  and  songs,  94-97. 

Slaveholders,  power  of,  44. 

Slavery,  39-47;  abolition  meas 
ures,  232-238. 

Slaves,  population,  19,  21;  as 
household  servants,  102. 

Smallpox,  207. 

Smith,  Samuel  Harrison,  organizes 
dancing  assembly,  67. 

Smith,    Mrs.    Samuel    Harrison, 

74- 

Society  of  Artists  of  the  United 
States,  organized,  85. 

Sonneck,  Oscar  G.,  on  American 
music,  94. 

South  Carolina,  population,  20; 
value  of  land  in,  23 ;  character 
istics  of  people,  36;  society  of, 
71;  no  divorce,  83 ;  Methodists 
in,  12 1 ;  threatens  disunion, 
252. 

South  Carolina,  University  of, 
128-129. 

Southern  Literary  Messenger,  146. 

Southern  Review,  The,  146. 

Stage  travel,  49-53. 

Steamboat  construction,  55-56. 

Steamboat  routes,  50-51. 

Stevens,  John,  applied  for  rail 
way  charter,  56. 

St.  Mary's,  stage  to,  52. 

Stuart,  Gilbert,  portrait  -  painter, 

85. 

Sumter,  Thomas,  Jr.,  a  slave 
holder,  43. 

Superstitions,   105. 


Surgery,  212-213. 
296 


INDEX 


Swedes  in  United  States,  20. 
Swiss  in  United  States,  20. 


Taxes,  101. 

Tayloe,  Col.  John,  places  house  at 
disposal  of  President  Madison, 

4- 

Taylor,  John,  Senator,  250-251. 

Teachers'  salaries,  136. 

Temperance  societies,   first,    173. 

Tennessee,  admission,  17;  slave 
population,  21;  characteristics 
of  people,  38;  Restriction  of 
religious  freedom  in,  1 18 ;  Meth 
odists  in,  121. 

Theater,  the,  in  United  States, 
86-92. 

Thorndike,  Israel,  Boston  shipper, 
230. 

Thornton,  ^  William,  and  negro 
colonization,  234-235. 

Thornton,  Dr.  William,  architect, 
4,  85;  steamboat,  56;  organized 
dancing  assembly,  67. 

Tingey,  Capt.  Thomas,  organized 
dancing  assembly,  67. 

Titles,  58-59. 

Toasts,  225-226. 

Tobacco,  use  of,  32. 

Transportation,  48-57. 

Travel,  difficulties,  48;  expense  of, 

52-54- 
Treaty   of   peace,    arrival   of,    i ; 

terms  of,  5. 
Trenton,  stage  to,  49. 
Trumbull,  John,  painter,  85. 

U 

Unitarianism,  beginnings  of,  122. 
United  States,  boundaries  of,  in 

17%3>     15-16;      divisions,     17; 

population,   19-22. 


Value  of  land,  23. 

Van   Buren,    Martin,   in   Senate, 

257. 
Van  Ness,  John  Peter,  organized 

dancing  assemblies,  67. 


Vermont,  admission  to  Union,  17; 
favored  revealed  religion,  117. 

Vice,  171-187. 

Vining,  John,  in  Senate,  257. 

Virginia,  population,  20-21 ;  value 
of  land  in,  23;  characteristics 
of  people,  35;  influence  of 
Capital  on,  48-49 ;  punishments 
in,  84;  religious  freedom  in,  1 18 ; 
religious  revivals  in,  120;  Meth 
odists  in,  121 ;  colleges  in,  127; 
crimes  in,  157;  racing  interests, 
177;  discusses  disunion,  252. 

Virginia  and  Kentucky  Resolu 
tions,  255. 

Virginia  Bill  of  Rights,  the,  116. 

Virginia,  University  of,  127,  129. 

W 

Waddell,  Rev.  Moses,  academy 
of,  132. 

Wages,  loo-ioi. 

War  of  1812,  causes  of,  4. 

Warren,  Dr.  John  Collins,  204. 

Warville,  Brissot  de,  interested  in 
negro  colonization,  235. 

Washington,  reception  of  news 
of  Treaty  of  Ghent,  3-7;  ap 
pearance  of,  30;  stage  at,  51- 
52;  social  life  of,  64-67;  ser 
vants  in,  102;  horse-racing  at, 
179;  charitable  institutions, 
197-198. 

Washington,  Bushrod,  236. 

Washington,  George,  proclama 
tion  of,  114;  Farewell  Address, 
116;  illness  of,  201;  artificial 
teeth,  212. 

Washington  and  Lee  University, 
127. 

Waterhouse,  Dr.  Benjamin,  207. 

Waverley  novels,  125. 

Webster,  Daniel,  in  Senate,  257. 

Webster,  Noah,  educational  cam 
paign  of,  139-142. 

Weekly  Magazine,  The,  Boston, 
144-145. 

Welsh  in  United  States,  20. 

White  House,  society  in,  60. 

Whitlock,  Mrs.,  actress,  89. 

Whitman,  Walt,  on  slavery,  41. 


297 


LIFE  IN  AMERICA  ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  AGO 


William  and  Mary  College,  127, 
129. 

Williams,  Col.  Ephraim,  founder 
of  Williams  College,  128. 

Williams  College,  128,  129. 

Wilmington,  society  in,  71;  yel 
low  fever  in,  208. 

Wisconsin,  17. 

Wistar,  Dr.,  of  Philadelphia,  108. 

Wollstonecraft,  Mary,  influence 
of  her  writings  in  America,  81- 
82. 

Women  in  slave  states,  44;  in 
fluence  in  politics,  74;  domestic 


ity  of,  75-76;  education  of,  76- 
77;    orthodox   in    religion,   77; 
literary  taste  of,  79-81. 
Wyandot  Indians,  21. 


Yale  University,  55,  128-129. 
Yellow-fever  epidemics,  208-209. 


Zion  Church  in  New  York,  121. 


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DUE  AS  STAMPED  BELOW 


SEP  2  2  2002 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


U.C.  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


